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Digital Adventure
It's a familiar story, but the telling
is different. Chennai-based Pentafour Software has just completed its animated action
adventure Sinbad -- Beyond The Veil Of Mist, an 84-minute saga about the
legendary sailor Sinbad who helps a charming princess to save her kingdom from an evil
wizard. Produced at a cost of almost $30 million (Rs 126 crore), the film has actors
Leonard Nimoy of Star Trek, Star Wars' Mark Hamill and Brendan Fraser
(the hero of the recent George of the Jungle) as Sinbad, lending their voices to
the animated characters of the film. Moving away from the conventional productions in this
genre, Sinbad is touted as the first full-length, three-dimensional animated film
in the world featuring characters that look human. What makes it stand apart is the use of
the Optical Motion Capture technique in which the movements of real human beings are
recorded digitally using optical cameras. These images are then superimposed on
computer-generated figures. As a result jerky movements usually associated with animation
films are absent here. "Traditionally, animation films target young children and deal
with creatures which did not demand striking differences in gender, dress, expressions and
so on," says V. Chandrasekaran, CMD, Pentafour Software & Exports. "Sinbad
will be a pioneering film." Pentafour, financed by US-based production house
Improvision Corporation, had 120 computer specialists working on it for almost a year at
Chennai and Hollywood. Whether or not box-office success comes its way, Sinbad --
to be released in the US in November or December, and likely to be out in India next year
-- should help Indian animators and films break new ground in Hollywood.
-K.M. Thomas
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