A late entrant in the IT sector compared to states in southern India, Gujarat is now fast emerging as a hub of visual effect studios. In less than six months, at least four studios dealing in special effects and animation have sprung up along with training academies.

A couple of new visual effects training centres are also being planned in Ahmedabad and Vadodara. These will also double up as training centres. The state-of-the-art studios are equipped with Python and Mel (both interactive programming languages), high definition cameras for cinematography, as well as blue and green rooms for shooting.

Jitendra Vaghani of Tekhnix said: “Several Indian as well as foreign parties have started coming to Gujarat with their movies, TV serials and ad films. The trend of ad film making is changing and we expect growth here.”

These studios-cum-training centres are also teaching animation, filmmaking, game programming and game design. Vaghani added: “The demand is high and we are training them to work with us. We trained almost 70 people for the movie, Blood-A Butcher’s Tale, for seven months. To make a movie like that, it would have cost the producers a fortune in the US or the UK. We did it here for only Rs 10 crore, although it took us a year and a half to complete it.”

The economic meltdown has further helped these studios get good business from the US and elsewhere. Qatar has also outsourced visual effects for a TV serial to Krazy Motion, a visual FX studio in Ahmedabad. Prashant Agrawal, Marketing Manager, Krazy Motion, said, “Inquiries from the US and the UK have gone up.”

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