The first show going out of Dreamworks Dedicated Unit(DDU) – Merry Madagascar, a Christmas TV Special that was first aired in NBC on Nov 17, 2009.
The show was still in the early stages of production when I joined so I was lucky to get time to sink in to the FX TD role. The biggest hurdle for anyone joining Dreamworks is getting acquainted with its proprietary pipeline, software and workflow methodologies. With the exception of couple of departments the whole studio used software they have been continuously researching and developing for a long time. FX was one of those few departments that used “Maya” although to a limited extent which was comforting in a way that there was something that sounded familiar to me in the world of unknowns. Another comforting fact was that pretty much everyone in the studio were in the same boat as far as the understanding of the pipeline went. So I wasn’t the only dumbo in the group and we all had to crack the nut together.
One of the things that clearly stood out was Dreamworks’ honest and highly optimistic efforts to groom the team and prepare it for their projects although it isn’t technically a part of their company. They stressed on bringing in the same work culture as their US studios, tried to give us the same kind of facilities and environment to the extent possible and also follow the same training methods used in US. To make this happen they moved some of their best creative, technical and production people to India to form the leadership team. They also got the trainers from US for on-site training.
As for my part in this project there isn’t really a lot to talk about. It was mostly a learning phase and really asking a lot of questions, learning new stuff and trouble shooting issues. Now I know what a particles and volumes are, what are they used for. Also got to learn some rendering concepts and techniques like rasterization, shading, shadows, cut-outs, depth maps etc. Working with the render farm – monitoring, optimizing and troubleshooting renders deployed on the farm. I also got to execute a shot that needed an artistic non-linear motion blur effect.
When it finally got over with Jeffrey’s final approval there was a great sense of achievement all around and it definitely raised the hopes of Dreamworks to produce more shows in India and perhaps triggering a new phase of the Indian Animation Industry.
Venu Krishnamurthy 