CHENNAI: What if there was a smart bus stop with an LED monitoring screen for passengers to track the location of their designated bus and calculate its arrival time? Or a cable car service connecting prime areas to ease the existing traffic congestions? Or a signal stopper to avoid accidents and ensure rules are in place? Or a functional drone delivery that brings the ordered food within the promised time? We all, at some point, must have envisioned such possibilities to be a part of Chennai’s work-in-progress smart city project. But, besides having big dreams, three content creators-cum-childhood friends have gone the extra mile to create working models using VFX and computer-generated imagery to show the kind of impact such makeovers (if executed) could have on the city and its people.
Digital dreams
Rigged Indian, an Instagram page run by VFX artists K Amir Khan, A Abdul Razack, and JS Md Abrar has been entertaining its 16.2k followers with posts featuring VFX videos and anime cosplays since November 2020. Introducing the team who run the show, Abrar says, “We’re a team of three, united by the common love for VFX. The pandemic-birthed page is a result of Amir’s passion for visual effects and he’s the lead designer behind all the projects. Abdul and I handle social media management. This is as important as our day jobs. We spend a substantial amount of time designing reels and posts.”
While the trio has been posting 3D art and VFX videos for a while now, it was their VFX series on Chennai that caught the attention of many and spiked their follower count. “As Chennaiites, we wanted to bring our innovation to the city through artworks and that worked wonders. Our first one was the advantages of having road blockers in the city. Eventually, we added more based on recommendations from people. People started resonating with our ideas as we projected them in a realistic way despite having visual effects. We felt such videos could offer solutions to existing problems. For instance, one of our videos showed how having platform protectors could stop vehicles from encroaching footpaths to avoid traffic. Or, the one on how having a bot cleaner can keep the city garbage-free. Our video on introducing double-decker buses in Chennai was a hit for the nostalgia it brought,” elaborates Abrar.
The effort to entertain
The posts, which look fairly simple overall, involve hours and sometimes months of work, points out Abrar. “Timing depends on the concept. It took us two days for the tram video, two weeks for the anime cosplay video, and two months for the one on a rollercoaster. The quality of output is a reflection of decades of self-learning as we’re not professionally trained. Consistency is key in this industry and there’s a lot of hard work in the pre and post-production phase that people seldom notice.”
There’s a dedicated fan following for their anime posts; particularly the one on the anime cricket league in Chennai. The trio also freelances, designing promotional social media campaigns for ad films. Discussing the plans in the pipeline, Abrar shares, “Content creation is a flourishing profession despite the heavy competition. We have lots of scope to explore and present and if it brings some change then nothing like it. We also have an NFT portal. We are not active, but we would like to experiment with it after some groundwork. We will also be getting more people to dabble in multiple projects. Perhaps, even offer a course for aspirants on VFX.”