KOCHI: Imagine living in a world where jellyfish fly, a gorilla as tall as a skyscraper freely roams the city, or whales swirl in the sky with the Kochi metro moving beneath. Sounds surreal, right?
These scenes belong to Sankar Ganesh’s imaginative world – the ‘Otherworld’ – and we are just minor participants in it. This VFX artist has been stitching together various environments for a while now, shaping a futuristic world.
Recently, the 26-year-old explored a world where cyborgs lived. Unlike the ‘Otherworld’, here technology reigns supreme. It features the Ernakulam market, where labourers, who carry sacks of onions, have robotic arms, and so does the tea-stall owner. An old woman, busy cutting fish, sports futuristic goggles, and rusty drones deliver fish.
“It’s called the ‘Cyberpunk India: Kochi’ series. I consider this as a prologue to what might happen in the future. We already have clues about the futuristic world we would enter after several years — humans transforming into robots,” says Sankar, who hails from Kochi.
“Though years ago, it felt like a story, it’s happening now. Elon Musk’s Neuralink is the finest example. After enhancing mental capability, humans would also explore physical transformation by opting for robotic mechanisms for better performance. Cyborgs and a powerful tech journey are waiting ahead of us, and I just wanted to show it visually.”.
By featuring the local people of Kochi, Sankar conveys the idea of technology taking over even at the grassroots. “I chose Ernakulam market because it’s a place where a lot of activities happen in every nook and cranny. The scenes were captured early in the morning,” he says
The video has garnered over 120 million views and 4.1 million likes on Instagram (@sank4r).
Sankar’s imagination never had a leash; it flew freely right from his childhood. Even as a school student, the long hours of history classes never bothered him as he was in his own world with historical characters.
By Class 11, he was drawn to photography and visual media. When the idea of cinema took root in his head, he decided to make his entry into films via cinematography. The journey, however, required Sankar to take a break for a year. “I continued making short films for a while. With Covid striking, I had to pause. Subsequently, my friend and artist, Sreekumar, gave a new perspective to my creative life; he introduced me to 3D. My brother Sreedhar, too, taught me the nuances of this art. And that gave me the confidence to create anything,” says Sankar.
This realisation fuelled him to research more about the craft, thereby keeping his fascination alive. Soon, Sankar brought mysteries to the frames with his futuristic concepts. It started with otherworldly concepts, including a KSRTC bus hovering in the air as its engine vrooms. From there, his page saw blue whales flying over a cliff and the land of mushrooms.
Demand for futuristic concepts
Sankar dreams of a future that has both the elements of nature and advanced tech, and his designs speak the same. “Futuristic concepts have potential in India. However, for the common audience, the available software is still in a developing stage,” says Sankar, who uses Blender and After Effects softwares.
For developing highly imaginative concepts, limitations exist. However, there seems to be an interest among youngsters to learn more about the medium.
“There’s a rising demand in VFX aspirants who want to create surreal content — work of their own and make it visible to netizens, instead of working for a firm and creating ideas that cater to the latter,” says Sankar.
In his upcoming series, the youngster aims to bring cyborgs into traditional art forms. Sankar agrees that uploading high-fantasy worlds wouldn’t work with viewers every time. “In the coming series, there will be more cyborgs in different avatars and settings. I believe the audience would be able to connect with those concepts more,” he says.