Indian film industry has just bagged its first nomination at the prestigious Visual Effects Society (VES) Awards, known as the “Oscars” of the animation and visual effects industry. 

India’s first full length animation 3D film, “Roadside Romeo”, co-produced by Yash Raj Films and Disney, has been nominated in the “Outstanding Animation in an Animated Motion Picture” category alongside big Hollywood animation films such as Dreamworks’ Kung-fu Panda and Disney’s Wall-E, apart from Bolt, The Chase & Waltz With Bashir. 

Yash Chopra, Chairman, Yash Raj Films, the co-producers of Roadside Romeo said, “We are extremely proud about Roadside Romeo’s nomination in VES Awards. This is not just an honour for us, but also a recognition and a tremendous boost for the collective vision that Yash Raj Films and Disney had set out to achieve through this unique alliance.“ 

“We are very proud that Roadside Romeo has been nominated at the VES, which is very big platform from the technical point of view. It was a perfect match of story and animation. We knew Yash Raj Films was a perfect partner and we have been vindicated,” said Mahesh Samat, managing director, Walt Disney Company (India).

“This is the Oscars for us. Just the fact that our name and our work was in the same category as the legendary Dreamworks and Pixar was unbelievable. Having said that, we always knew while making Roadside Romeo that we were doing something special. But I guess it’s just the Indian humility that we remain in awe of the work done by these big studios,” said Pankaj Khandpur, creative director of Visual Computing Labs (VCL), the VFX arm of the Tata Group, which had done the animation for the film.

Roadside Romeo’s 90 minutes has around 1500 shots and 37 scenes. Each frame was executed to detail in less than two years involving 170 odd artists at peak. The entire film was made up of 150000 frames. 

The Annual VES Awards recognizes the outstanding visual effects in over a dozen categories of film, animation, television, commercials and video games and is one of the Premier awards globally. This is the first time that a property created in India has been nominated for VES Awards for excellence in visual effects and animation. The awards are scheduled to be held in Los Angeles, just a day before the Oscar night on February 21, 2009.