After the first iteration of the Women's Creator Program was a success in 2021, Saraswathi Vani Balgam, Creative Director of Dancing Atoms Studios Inc., and Shruti Verma from Unreal Engine created a new one. In order to inspire and train female creators throughout South East Asia, the program's reach was expanded in 2022. WCP-II, which was incubated by Asifa India in collaboration with Epic Games, received a flood of applications from all over Asia. Over the course of six weeks, Epic Games offered comprehensive training and mentoring to women producers in collaboration with Asifa India, Open Air Films, and Perforce Software as partners.
The team at Asifa India, which consists of Director of Outreach & Community Services Sanjay Khimesara, members of the Core Committee Sesha Prasad A.R., Siva Kumar Kasetty, Ramakrishnan Vinod, and R.K.Polina, Manager Priyanka Ajit, and others, reached out to very specific, talented working professionals in ten different countries and ensured the calibre of participants.
Twenty-one contenders were selected after a thorough shortlisting process for a six-week mentorship. With the aid of the real-time Engine, Unreal Engine 5.0, the developers were given entire freedom to bring their own ideas and thoughts and bring them to life from pre-visualization through finalisation.
Saraswathi-Vani supported the batch one female creators and encouraged them to lead the upcoming Southeast Asia batch.
Ananya Srivastava, Gautami Vegiraju, Gayatri Rao, Hina Saiyada, Nida Arshia, Pragti Wadhwa, Rouank Magoo, Rutul Patel, and Aayshman Pandey were the mentors for the second batch of the women creators programme. They were skilled, talented experts who supported them during the entire production of their films.
The SEAC's female creators were encouraged and trained by the initiative to include Realtime Production into their work processes. The process was staged, starting with a pre-visualization assessment and the shortlisting of 11 finalists.
The intense training course lasted six weeks and covered a variety of topics, including animation, DDC workflows, world building, terrain tools, lighting, post-processing, material editor, sequence, livelink, and blueprints. Shruti Verma, Business Lead for India and Southeast Asia at Epic Games, and Mr. Arvind Neelakantan, Tech Evangelist, both made significant contributions to the deployment of both WCP iterations. This program's success has been greatly influenced and aided by Quentin Staes-Polet from Epic Games.
Wasim Khan led the Open Air team, which was in charge of organising the candidates' schedules and processes. Technical assistance was provided by Ramesh Anumakoda and his group.
Free training was provided to all 21 applicants for every week. Unreal continues to provide possibilities for women in cinema, gaming, VFX, and animation, demonstrating once more that it values community building. For the second class of female creators, it was a paid programme. The concepts of the female creators were also assessed by Bombay Rose director Gitanjali Rao. We at Asifa India are committed to having an influence on those in our community.
