Mir Z. Ali

Visual effects specialist Mir Zafar Ali started his career by creating the immaculate sheet of hair that cascades around a shampoo model's face. Since then, the Beaconhouse and FAST graduate from Karachi has been in the team for the brilliant sequences in The Golden Compass in 2007 that beat those in The Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End and Transformers. The world can also thank him for bringing the villain 'Venom' to life in Spider-Man III. Now, he's basking in the aftermath of another success, X-Men: First Class - the debuted at No. 1 in the box office in its opening weekend. If any young artist in Karachi thinks it can't be done, they just need to follow Mir Zafar Ali's career.

Ali began with doing what a lot of people in the visual effects field do - something unrelated. Having studied to be a software engineer in college, he quickly realized it wasn't nearly exciting enough. He spent some time trying his hand at the trade with local organizations such as Sharp Image and Nucleus Studios, always working primarily with computer graphics. Eventually, he took off to the US to specialize in visual effects at Savannah College of Art and Design, Georgia.

A few years later he found himself working on his first movie with Digital Domain, a Los Angeles-based company. Ali's first movie was The Day After Tomorrow in which he worked on wrapping colossal waves around buildings - and making it believable. His forte is replicating natural phenomena.