Outpost Mumbai GM Sam Thakur Discusses Indian VFX with AnimationXpress

Talking recently with AnimationXpress, Sam discussed new details of the Mumbai studio, as well as his views on Indian VFX industry and how progress in India can continue to drive the success of the industry as a whole. Below is an excerpt of the article.

“We’re looking at getting fully set up around the end of the third quarter in our facility which will be located in the western suburbs, which puts us in the middle of things. There’s an existing community in that region, and we’re looking forward to being surrounded by like-minded people, while remaining in an accessible location.  Our facility will have a 300-seat capacity – we’re looking forward to sharing more information with everyone soon. As for now, we’re fully set up as a remote studio with 80 artists already working on some incredible work,” Thakur mentioned about the upcoming office.

According to Thakur, people in the Indian VFX industry are looking for the same level of exposure that artists in other countries get. They’re not getting into the industry to only do the laborious tasks; they also want a say in the creative decision-making.

“We have seen some really positive change over recent years. I think we’ve seen a transition from the initial stages of the industry here where a lot of people were just venturing into the field and there wasn’t much complex work coming into India. Now, and over the last couple of years, a lot of the bigger projects have been largely produced in the Indian studios. Take The Jungle Book and The Lion King for example, a lot of the back-end work was primarily done in India. 

“While there is still a bit of reluctance in sharing the creative work with India, this too is slowly starting to shift. Studios in the west have started to gain trust and realise that quality work can be done here. They’ve started relying on the talent in India and are slowly giving more and more complex work to our studios. Projects that are creatively more demanding have started coming in, and that’s a great development for the industry here,” he mentioned.

Read the full article on the AnimaitonXpress website.