The animation industry that has grown manifold in India has achieved another milestone with Tata Elxsi's Visual Computing Labs rendering unique

visual effects for Aamir Khan's home production 'Taare Zameen Par'.

Pankaj Khandpur, Creative Director, Visual Computing Labs, Tata Elxsi said, 'We have worked with Aamir Khan earlier on Lagaan and my team was

well aware of the exacting standards that he expects. This film being his directorial debut as well made it even more exciting to work on. We had

some of the most talented artists in their respective fields working with us on this project, including Dhimant Vyas with Claymation and Vaibhav

Kumaresh with cell animation. Taare Zameen Par was not a visual effects intensive film, but the work we did on this project was different and definitely

challenging'.

The film revolves around a dyslexic boy, Ishaan who shows great talent as a fine artist. This movie has an amazing song sequence, directed by Ram

Madhwani of Equinox Films. The child's frustration and fear of the alphabet is shown through creepy looking insects with alphabet bodies that crawl

into every part of his school day, from out of his school bag onto his desk, up his neck.

"It's always interesting to work with Ram Madhwani, because of his unique take on visual style. The insects had to look creepy, but the metaphor of

them being Ishaan's fear of alphabets and numbers had to register for it to work. So, one combined styles to achieve the look of creepy insects and

graphic bodywork" said Pankaj Khandpur.

Another outstanding example of the use of visual effects is where the colors swirl together, come together and then apart all set to the beautiful

score, a literal riot of colours in the little boy's mind, which finally settle into the watercolor.

Ishaan's dream sequence is yet another example, where he is lost in a world of birds, trains and dragons, till his mother shakes him out of his reverie

and they disappear in puffs of smoke.

There is also a prolonged sequence, which was a challenge in execution, because of the length of the sequence and the number of layers. It's a build

up of alphabets from just one letter, to a board full of chaos and jumbled text, again, set to a very interesting piece of music.