(26 June 2007 7:36 pm)

MUMBAI: If Rajinikant fans found their screen idol's complexion a tad fairer in Sivaji- the Boss than he normally is, digital grafting was responsible for it.

Indian Artists' team of 25 technicians worked for a year on the six-minute style song, where Rajini's complexion appears fairer.

Says VFX artist Srini who worked on the process, "Director Shanker wanted to change Rajini's wheatish complexion to a white European complexion. As a VFX company, this was a challenging task for us because nobody has executed this type of concept in the world."

The team did an in-depth study of the European complexion and arrived at certain conclusions. "We found that white skin reflects more light and has less shadow when compared to dark skin and is translucent in some areas. Therefore a simple color correction of the hero's skin would not achieve the desired effect," says Srini.

"For the shoot, we used an English lady with a fair complexion and flushed cheeks. With the help of cinematographer K.V.Anand every single shot of Rajini was repeated with her because lighting conditions change in every shot. After the final edit all the 630 hero shots and 630 girl shots were scanned in 4K resolution. Each of the 9000 scanned frames ware rotoscoped to separate the body parts (face, hands, legs etc.). The white lady's skin was mapped onto the Super Star's image using Eyeon digital fusion software," he says.

There were two difficult aspects in this project. One was matching the girl's action with the hero's action and the second was matching both of their body proportions during mapping.