Novaira Maqsood Can Give You Wings and Mir Zafar Ali Can Freeze You!

Since the start of this war on terror, all we hear about is the terrorists that Pakistan breeds. All over the world, Pakistan has been branded as a hub for terrorist and terrorism. It is very unfortunate, but that’s the truth. It is especially unfortunate because we all know that there are Pakistanis who are talented and leaving a mark on the world stage. This post is dedicated to two such people creating ripples in the Movie Animation world.

Novaira Masood

If you haven’t seen Maleficent you have definitely heard about the movie. It is a fairy tale movie starring Angelina Jolie. The film boasts groundbreaking animation, especially in the design of the wings that Angelina appears to have.

Why am I mentioning this? It’s because the visuals were the artwork of Novaira Masood, a female Pakistani software engineer and her team.

Novaira has been working in Hollywood productions for quite some time and has to her credit developing visual effects for Hollywood films such as A Christmas Carol, Mars needs Moms, Thor, Transformers 3 and Jack the Giant Slayer.

A student of FAST-NU, Novaira was not very interested in the field of IT until her final year when she fell in love with graphic designing. She later did her Masters degree from the University of Minnesota and the rest is history.

Currently based in Seattle, Novaira explains “I really like writing code that has instant visual feedback and I liked making things look better and more realistic.”

Having been in the field for six years, Novaira has worked in multiple areas of visual effects, but her main focus has been on performance capturing software, a technique used to capture live human body and facial data to apply onto animated characters in order to make the animations look more lifelike and realistic.

Novaira is currently working for Microsoft in Seattle in their XBox division for an ‘unannounced project’.

Three cheers for Novaira!

Mir Zafar Ali

Mir Zafar Ali is an Academy Award winning visual affects specialist from our very own Pakistan. At the age of 38 Mir Zafar Ali has had a dream run. He is the first Pakistani to be a part of an Academy Award winning team.

His team won an Academy Award for best visual effects in 2008, for the movie The Golden Compass. Not just this, but Mr. Mir Zafar Ali has now recently also laid claim to another Academy Award, this one for the biggest animated hit of all time: Frozen. This was also the first Academy Award in the animation category for Walt Disney Studios.

Mir Zafar has been a part of many stunning visual affects teams for hits such as The Day After Tomorrow, X-Men and The Incredible Hulk. He also played a crucial role in bringing Venom, the Spider Man 3 villain, to the big screen and is known for his talent to create water waves.

Below are some of the films that Mir has worked on in Hollywood.