Redefine, a sister concern of global visual effects and animation company Double Negative (DNEG), has expanded into Calcutta with plans to recruit around 100 creative artists and technicians.

Redefine has offices in Mumbai, Hyderabad, and Bangalore and has followed up with expansion in Calcutta and Pune. These offices will work closely with the global studios in Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, London, and Sofia.

Viral Thakkar, creative director and VFX supervisor India Redefine, said the operations started in 2019 to primarily cater to global clients such as Netflix and for big-budget motion pictures. Recent projects where it has worked include Michael Bay directed Ambulance and Netflix movie, Sweet Girl, while projects in the pipeline include upcoming movie Brahmastra and a TV series based on video game franchise Halo.

“The kind of projects that we are working on have very complex visual effects. To cater to this, we are in a constant hunt for good talent. Calcutta was our next destination because we found from our earlier experiences, there is a lot of good talent in this part of the country. We found good technical knowledge among students coming out from the animation schools,” Thakkar said.

“There are people from Calcutta who are already working at our Bangalore office and now with the work from home coming in, a lot of people want to move back to their hometowns and this allowed us to expand,” said Thakkar.

He said that the company has already got more than 100 applications from Calcutta. 2D composition and 3D animation are among the major focus areas even as the company is recruiting across departments. The animation, VFX, and post-production industry was estimated at Rs 94.9 billion in 2019 and it is expected to grow to Rs 129.3 billion by 2023.

A study by EY & Ficci shows that animation/VFX studios have witnessed a surge in content demand for domestic shows, particularly from the OTT players, which have turned to 2D and 3D animated and visual effects to fill the gap in live content during the Covid pandemic.

Around 25 per cent of Indian studios have started adopting artificial intelligence and machine learning to streamline workflows and fuel content development.

The animation, VFX, and post-production industries were estimated at Rs 94.9 billion in 2019 and it is expected to grow to Rs 129.3 billion by 2023.