My Journey#
My career in the film, animation, and visual effects industry spans over two decades, rooted in my Computer Science background. It all began in 2003 as an animator and character rigger at Paprikaas in Bengaluru, where I contributed to various kids’ TV shows.
In 2005, a growing interest in character rigging led me to Prana Studios in Mumbai to work on Disney’s Tinker Bell film series. Over three years, I advanced from a developer specializing in rigging tools to a Rigging Lead on various shows, ensuring consistent quality rigs within production timelines. I culminated my time there as Head of Rigging, managing a team of 16.
In 2009, I transitioned to DreamWorks’ unit at Technicolor India as a Technical Director. I was primarily involved with the Crowds department, where I provided frontline technical support to artists while also building and maintaining the studio’s production pipeline and tools. Additionally, I collaborated with creative leads and technology teams to establish new techniques and workflows to address show-specific challenges on films like Penguins of Madagascar and Madagascar 3.
My international career began in 2015 when I moved to Animal Logic in Sydney, Australia. As a Performance Technical Director, I was responsible for developing an array of workflow tools and integrating in-house core technology into production pipeline for the Layout, Assembly, and Animation teams on The Lego Ninjago Movie and The Lego Batman Movie.
Subsequently, in 2017, I became a Lead Pipeline Technical Director at Base FX in Xiamen, China, where I was instrumental in establishing the pipeline for their first feature animation, Wish Dragon. My key contribution was to develop the Crowds pipeline and supporting tooling from the ground up, integrating the Atoms Crowd plugin for Maya for authoring and simulating crowds.
Finally, in 2019, I joined Weta Digital (now Weta FX) in Wellington, New Zealand. As a Creature Pipeline TD and Senior Software Engineer for the past six years, I’ve been integrating various in-house frameworks and simulation solvers into the creature asset build, simulation and baking pipeline while also writing applications for Creatures Department. The result is a pipeline that facilitates efficient creation of realistic creatures for numerous visual effects movies and TV shows such as Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Avatar: The Way of Water and the upcoming Avatar: Fire and Ash.