The Hindu Business Line : In a state of animation

A southern Sultan, Raju the thinking autorickshaw, super elephants and other divine characters are getting ready to charm the audience with their wicked smiles and other charms enhanced by computer-generated imagery (CGI). From favourite outsourcing destination to exhibiting its own art work, some a little amateurish, some quite convincing and profitable, the industry has come a long way.

According to Shailendra Singh, Joint Managing Director, Percept Ltd, the creator of the hugely successful Hanuman films, there are some 92 animated films in the making. Even while the outsourcing business continues to grow, the industry is pursuing its own doodle dreams in a sudden burst of creativity. New desi 2D and 3D characters are springing out of drawing boards faster than anyone ever imagined. A shortage of skilled talent, however, could be delaying the arrival of the home-grown Pixars.

The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting recently also appointed PricewaterhouseCoopers to undertake a study on the issue. Tapaas Chakravarti, Chairman and Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of DQ Entertainment, compares it to the growing pains the software industry faced in the Nineties. DQE expanded production capacities in Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata and ongoing expansion in Hyderabad will require an additional 940 skilled workers by this financial year. “This, in fact, will be sufficient for the ongoing productions while more will be needed by the fourth quarter of this year to take in several feature film productions,” says Chakravarti. Suresh Kumar, Chairman, Compact Disc India (CDI), which has announced several international co-productions, says the industry could need as many as three lakh professionals in 2009. According to industry estimates, about 1.8 lakh students walk out from the training institutes mushrooming across the country. “If you pick from the handful of established institutes such as Areana, Framebox, Toons or Maya Academy of Advanced Cinematics (MAAC) then you have only about a lakh to choose from,” says Kumar.

Animation courses, which don’t always come cheap, are much in demand. Dubbed versions of Hollywood blockbusters such as Spiderman are inspiring youngsters in towns such as Lucknow and Indore to opt for such courses, says Kingshuk Gupta, Senior Vice-President and spokesperson, MAAC. The company is planning to double its centres to 120 in the next two years, and expects a big percentage of the 4,000-5,000 students who walk out with diplomas every year to come from these towns. The company says it invests significantly in upgrading to new versions of expensive software and tools. It also trains its teaching staff and has an academic advisory board with the likes of Shelly Page, responsible for Artistic Development at DreamWorks (the studio that produced Kung Fu Panda and Shrek, among other films), on board to make sure courses stay market relevant. Gupta adds that the company is venturing into developing its own IP and would absorb some of its own students who are ready for the industry.

However, just about 20 per cent of students at private animation training centres have an art background.

“At Big Animation, as a practice, most of the people we hire are those with some creative and traditional skills such as sculpting, drawing, painting, acting and mimicry, voice-over artists and choreographers. The remaining process is comparatively easy to learn. With the increasing focus on original content creation, design skills are more in demand but rarer than the usual production-related skills. Techno-creative skills (texturing, shaders, lighting dynamics, composite effects) are certainly valued, but it’s an added advantage if these creative artists have a strong foundation in traditional arts,” said Ashish Kulkarni of Reliance ADAG’s Big Animation.

For directors such as Soumitra Ranade, it’s not enough that his team knows how to move the mouse around and is familiar with the latest software. Most of the 80-member Accel Animation team that he is currently working with have degrees in fine arts and that makes a huge difference. Ranade, who is directing Alibaba and the 41 Thieves for UTV is looking for developed aesthetics preferably refined with intensive training from National Institute of Design or IIT Powai’s Industrial Design Centre.

Companies are also forced to train employees again, at their own costs, because a life project is no classroom. Where stakes are high, and project deadlines tight, that’s not possible. CDI will hire at least another 650 people over the next 15 months for both its animation and gaming ventures but will not hire freshers. The search for more experienced people has led DQE to hire people from Paris, Canada and the US. The upside for those who make deft little strokes with their digital brushes are paychecks to the tune of Rs 1 lakh a month for four years’ experience. Salaries have gone up by over 200 per cent in last five years and settled at a growth rate of 8-12 per cent a year.

It is party time for the animation industry. Percept Pictures’ Hanuman and Hanuman Returns were little baby steps compared to the Lankan leap the industry is set to make. The creative benchmark has been raised and increasingly specialised skill sets are in demand. “Our productive offerings range from animation for all platforms to live action and CGI productions, original intellectual development to working on scripts and going on to developing characters, environments, props and cinematics. The need of skills in many more specialised areas go on increasing. Today in the company, high-quality production programming skills to dynamic VFX or cinematography are also in great demand. Our post-production facilities also take a large number of highly skilled editors, sound recording technicians and artists,” says Chakravarti of DQE.

“There is no lack of creativity in this country. Every nook and corner has stories and art. There is, however, a lack of imagination and that comes from not having the confidence and being overly dependent on technology alone. The problem is that not everyone is convinced that an investment of Rs 50 crore in an animated feature will be recovered. But a good animation movie requires a big budget,” says Percept’s Singh. Percept’s monkey-faced god is set to carry out superhero antics on his third outing, this time round on a Harley-Davidson! With Return of the Ravana (Hanuman 3) and Krishna - Prince of Love, Percept is targeting a larger international market and is in talks with strategic partners. Before that there’s Jumbo, ready for its debut in three months.

For Shemaroo, which is ready with Ghatothkach - The Master of Magic, talent issues are not that grave yet. Original production is in its infancy and Smita Maroo, Vice-President (Animation Division), Shemaroo Entertainment, is ready to grant it a few years before it reaches world-class levels. “There is no lack of talent or stories. After all, Indian animators have been working on the most ambitious of projects in the recent past, whether it is The Lord of the Rings or The Chronicles of Narnia,” she says. With Bal Ganesh, the company had broken even; their forthcoming film will be launched in seven languages and as Ghatothkach the character has little religious baggage, Shemaroo is taking it to new territories such as France and the US.

Maroo also points out that there is great demand for such content outside theatres, with exciting revenue opportunities from DVD, broadcast and other rights ending with merchandising. “We are a young nation and youngsters are increasingly influencing buying decisions,” she says. Shailendra Singh’s explanation of Hanuman’s success is that Percept, unlike regular studios where creativity is the primary driver, treat animated heros like a regular consumer product, which is developed on market insights. “The differentiator is that we have some 20-odd years of advertising and marketing experience behind us,” said Singh, whose three releases will cost Rs 70 crore.

Various State Governments, the Information & Broadcasting Ministry as well as the Human Resources Department are considering various options to add quality education in animation and gaming to those being offered by Government Fine Art Colleges and technical institutions. “We have even gone ahead and established public-private partnerships with the Governments of West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan and are receiving good quality talent, though small in number, from these high quality training institutions also,” says DQE’s Chakravarti.

“The available talent in India is strong at an application level; creative and artistic foundations as well as story-telling and cinematic skills are, however, missing. This can change only if animation, gaming and visual effects are positioned as mainstream career options,” says Big Animation’s Kulkarni.

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