The Hindu Business Line : Where's Mr Spark?

The animation industry is looking for more people. And the training institutes are trying to meet this need. What's proving elusive is the creativity to bring story-telling to throbbing life.

THE design's good, the colours are just right. You hold up your artistic work to the light with pride, but with some doubt too. Is something lacking? Why does it leave you feeling a little dissatisfied?

Right on cue comes along this creative friend of yours. He picks up your piece, studies it for a minute, puts in a line or two, and hey presto, your work smiles at you. All it lacked, you now see, was some soul to shine through the layers of art.

The domestic animation industry is waiting for just that creative touch, one could say. Simply put, to animate means to bring something to life — to bring a drawing of a character (a person, animal, or inanimate object) to life. The process of animation involves drawing a character in successive positions to create a lifelike movement. Characters are given lifelike qualities by providing them gestures and expressions.

It is now beyond dispute that India is emerging as a hot `graphics BPO destination'. A number of Indian companies have bagged contracts from abroad, for producing full-length animation films or sections of it. Estimates of business potential vary, but they all run into billions of dollars. At least, the established companies are sitting on big orders. Crest Communications Ltd, for instance, has an order book of $10 million, and the book is growing. Many others, such as Toonz Animation, Paprikaas and Pentamedia have overseas orders on hand.

Sensing sunny days ahead for the animation industry as a whole, a number of institutes have sprung up to provide training in the use of software tools such as Maya and 3D Studio Max. But the key question is: do they deliver the goods?

According to Rajeev Choudhry who runs a recruitment company called `iSearch', there are some 10,000 animation professionals, but by next year, the demand will grow to as much as 40,000. Quoting Nasscom, he says that around 3 lakh skilled professionals will be needed in the country by 2008.

While training institutes have sprung up, the industry is clearly not satisfied with the quality of training provided. The gap is well recognised: most training providers teach the use of software tools, but the industry wants that and creative skills.

Says Nandish Domlur, Co-founder and Managing Director, Paprikaas India, "Companies, small and large, are getting into the training bandwagon a la software and IT courses. While this provides short-term mediocre results, it's not the roadmap for bringing the best quality education and training. This myopic view is largely motivated by the `quick buck lure', in that these courses are either created around Graphics 101 or Maya or other packages." Paprikaas India is the Indian arm of Paprikaas Animation Studios, a US-based firm with development studios in Bangalore and Europe.

Elaborating on this, Srini R. Raghavan, Co-founder and President, Paprikaas, observes that the training offered "is of very poor quality because there are not many `trainers' available in India." The "trainee becomes the trainer" soon after finishing his or her programme. The curriculum does not cover the most important aspects of animation training — "the art of story telling and film making".

Two sides to the picture

"Being able to flirt with the mouse is not good enough," says Abhay Bhalerao, Vice-President - Corporate Strategy and Finance, Crest Communications Ltd. "A good animator is a person who can visualise. A lot of the institutes are just training their students on the usage of animation softwares, but little is done in terms of pushing students towards honing their creative skills."

"Most training providers are unable to provide the crucial industry link to the students," says P. Jayakumar, Chief Executive Officer, Toonz Animation India, Thiruvanthapuram. Thus, the view from one side of the fence is: training institutes just do not do enough. So what happens? When a student comes out of an institute, he does get picked up, for there is a demand and a somewhat trained hand is better than a totally raw one, but the company has to waste time in training him further to make him production-ready.

But the other side of the fence has its own viewpoint. According to P. Saravanaraja, Centre Head, Arena Multimedia, (a franchisee of Arena, Aptech's brand for multimedia training,) some amount of in-house training to fine-tune a new recruit is necessary in any industry, not just animation. But apart from that, a training institute can do little other than to offer a course. Beyond that, it is really up to the student. If a student wants to master animation fully, and thereby be production-ready, well, there are courses. For instance, the Arena facility in Anna Nagar, Chennai — the biggest in South India — has recently introduced a course called "Diploma in Animation Engineering". The 20-month course costs Rs 1.8 lakh (including a service tax of 10.2 per cent. Why tax students, wonders Saravanaraja).

Saravanaraja points out that Arena indeed has a bunch of courses that collectively make a student an expert in multimedia. Take a bunch of five courses — graphic designing for the advertising industry, CD-ROM authoring for eLearning business, special effects for films, Web designing for corporates, and animation. A student may choose one or a combination of these. But if he goes through all the five, he will learn to use 25 softwares over a 22-month period.

Incidentally, Aptech (now a part of SSI) has received recognition as a University from the University Grants Commission and is offering a B.Sc in Multimedia and Animation. So, it is not as if the training institutes do not do their job. Students, perhaps with a view to get a quick job or perhaps because of the affordability, do a short-term course and seek employment.

Note that the training side does not quite dispute the existence of the `talent gap'.

The question now is, how to bridge the gap.

First, part of the problem is that the students are not aware of the potential of the industry. Saravanaraja believes that with proper campaign, most students who go for call centre jobs could be attracted towards animation. An entry-level job in animation would fetch about Rs 8,000 and for good hands, there is no upper limit. "Some of our students earn upwards of Rs 1 lakh a month," Saravanaraja told eWorld.

Salary levels are expected to go up, as India gets a bigger pie of the animation cake. Estimates of market size vary. According to an Arthur Andersen study on the Entertainment and Media Sector, the global animation production in 2005 is estimated to be $70 billion, while animation by Indian producers is expected to be of the order of $1.5 billion. As awareness grows of the potential the industry offers, better quality students could come to the industry and do more comprehensive courses.

Secondly, a trend towards high-visibility courses appears to have started. Apart from Aptech, a number of other companies are tying up with overseas universities to offer similar courses. Paprikaas Animation, for example, is tying up with a large American university (whose name it will announce shortly) for courseware and faculty.

The Chennai-based Toonskool is in the process of tying up with a Canadian university. Toonskool was started recently by Rajeev Choudhry of iSearch. Incidentally, iSearch has a database of 4,800 professionals, which, according to Choudhry, represents 48 per cent of the trained talent in the country. He told eWorld that Toonskool itself was started because as a recruiter he clearly saw the gap between what the institutes churned out and what the industry wanted.

The animation industry offers career opportunities in a range of activities — from technology-based jobs such as scanning, compositing, digital ink and paint, and game designing to creative guys like visual-effects supervisors, 3D modellers and character animators. Choudhry believes a training institute should have the capability to train a student in any of these areas that best suits the student's aptitude. A gifted artist may be trained in animation, (or, `animacting'). While a person trained in handling the software may be able to make a character, say, move an eyelid, the `expression' can come only from an artist. If a light is presumed to be in a certain place in a hand-drawn room, where would the `shadows' fall? A photography buff would know this better and could be, therefore, trained in lighting. A comprehensive training course should train a student in all the skills, but give focussed training on that skill that best suits his aptitude.

Back to the original question — how will the talent gap be plugged? A reconciling view is that it will happen naturally, over a period of time, as the industry grows in size and stature, and awareness of its potential increases. Independent institutes are providing more comprehensive courses and animation companies are themselves getting into training. Apart from Paprikaas and Toonskool, the Toonz 3D Academy of Toonz Animation India is an example. So, give it some time, there would be enough talent. After all, the industry itself is new in India, not more than some five years old. But till then, well, here is an opportunity for those who are wise enough to equip themselves thoroughly, ahead of others, and, dip their fingers in gold.

ramesh@thehindu.co.in

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