Sivakarthikeyan's latest film, Ayalaan, is turning out to be a huge success and crossed the 50 crore mark in worldwide gross at the box office on the fourth day. Directed by R. Ravikumar and featuring music composed by Academy Award winner, the big-budget science-fiction film involves heavy computer graphics (CG), with VFX supervisor Bejoy Arputharaj, CEO, Phantom-FX, in an exclusive interview with Galatta explaining the design process behind the alien character around whom the story revolves.
Speaking about the extensive work behind the alien character's VFX in Ayalaan, Bejoy stated, "There are nearly 4,600 visual effects shots in the film. From the small aspects that were removed to the big creations that made their way into the film, there are 4,600 shots altogether. Among them, nearly 2000+ shots are set on the alien character alone. This is a big task. In fact, among the Indian films, this is going to be one-of-its-kind actually. Nobody has done it. Nobody has done such a CG character that appears throughout the film. So, maybe this is the first attempt we have done."
Opening up on the design process of the alien character voiced by actor Siddharth in Ayalaan, Bejoy Arputharaj explained, "The aliens usually shown in most films look terrifying. It's tough to connect with them. The alien in our film is a friendly character. And, it has many emotional moments and portions with a lot of dialogues. If we present him as another creature, it cannot transfer those emotions. So, our focus was on designing him as a humanoid along the lines of the grey alien concept and make it look cute instead of frightening. We worked a lot on adding the cuteness factor and this version is the final product after more than 30 different versions of the character."
Watch Bejoy Arputharaj explain the alien design process in Ayalaan in the video below:
