a 'hell' in 3d animation with the punishments taken from ancient scriptures. They also designed a grim reaper astride his bull who guides visitors through hell. Pankaj Khandpur, creative director of VCL said, "We tried to stay true to the scriptures, while creating imagery that wasn't too gory. [...] an interesting project since we had to visualise it all without any reference point." The animation was done in a span of three months. VCL also did the CGI for a "cosmic zoom" scene, where the camera zooms from beyond the clouds to the streets of Chennai city, which no real camera can achieve. Aerial views and paintings of the city were stitched together along with computer generated images (CGI) of clouds to create the long, one-piece camera zoom. Animator and special effects designer L. I. Kannan, who would later turn director with the long-delayed period film Karikalan with Vikram in the lead, also worked on the special effects. Meanwhile, the special effects for the time-slice sequence were rendered by Big Freeze in London. The scene where Anniyan addresses a packed audience in Nehru Stadium was filmed with the space empty. The crowd was created through visual effects using crowd multiplication methods. The VFX for the sequence was done under the supervision of visual effects consultant Zameer Hussain of Land Marvel Animation Studios, Chennai. The scene, in which hundreds of buffaloes chase down a delinquent car owner into an abandoned sand quarry and trample him to death, was accomplished through CGI using just one buffalo. The CG work, was supplied by Jayakumar and V. Srinivas Mohan of the Chennai-based firm, Indian Artists Computer Graphics. Srinivas and his team had earlier worked with Shankar in Boys. Speaking of the sequence, Srinivas quipped, "The animals are lethargic and listless in their movements. Nothing can make them agile." Themes and influences The storyline in Anniyan is typical of Shankar's yen for showcasing society's ills and targets the inept, rules-flouting public. The film sheds light on the increasing social apathy and public negligence, and attempts to address these issues which plague the society and hamper the development of India. S. Anand of Outlook noted that most of Shankar's films portray the hero as a "one-man agent of change" and cited, "From the neo-Nazi character Kamal Haasan plays in Indian to his last film Anniyan, featuring a schizophrenic Brahmin serial killer who butchers 'wrongdoers', Shankar has