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Rekha Kumar

Crest Communications rides the animation wave with aplomb. It wants to make the magic work even better.

One of India's leading animation outfits, Crest Communications, has many a feather in its creative cap. Besides being the first Indian company to grab the Clio (the international advertising excellence award), it was also nominated for the Annie Award for one of its co-production series. With some of India's hottest talent like Shyam Benegal and Javed Akhtar on board, Crest is indeed making waves. The captain of the ship, A.K. Madhavan, shares with us some notes from this journey.

On why Crest maintains a low profile in an era in which companies shout out their achievements from rooftops, he says with a smile, "Shouting from rooftops only gives you a sore throat, not business."

Given that India's studios thrive on projects from abroad, it becomes imperative that quality comes before everything else. The company is focused on furthering its business in its primary market, the US, while adhering to stringent quality and technological benchmarks. Having established its benchmarks, Crest is now scaling up its production value chain.

One cannot agree more with Madhavan when he observes that the country's nascent animation industry must hone its creative and technological skills to position itself on the global animation map.

Crest Communications and Indian advertising go a long way together. The company started its operations as a commercial advertising production house (including post-production work ). Today, it is recognised as a creative and technologically savvy production house. Apart from being a regular entrant at most creative and technical awards in advertising, it has also branched into computer-generated images (CGI or 3D animation) and is currently exploring the home video and home theatre markets. Their co-production series, Jakers! The adventures of Piggley Winks, was nominated for the prestigious Annie Award. Madhavan attributes this to the production quality, which was at par with productions from prominent studios like Warner, DNA Productions and Nickelodeon. Jakers, a computer animated TV series, stood out in a crowd of 2D animation series and Crest used the Softimage XSI software for this series.

In India, except for a rare Tenali Raman on Cartoon Network, we hardly get to see animation that is `made in India' or even `made for India'. Madhavan contrasts the Indian animation market with that of Japan, which does not need to look beyond its huge domestic market. "The Indian (mass) market doesn't yet have the sensibilities to appreciate animation in various forms. Then there is the cost factor — animation production is a very expensive affair and the payback periods are very long."

Although Indian animation is still in its infancy, there are signs that the scenario is changing for the better. "We have recently executed a 13-episode TV series as a co-production venture with MediaCorp TV12 of Singapore. This is being enjoyed tremendously in Singapore and we will syndicate it to Indian channels soon. With the industry maturing, the players becoming financially stronger and the number of children's channels increasing, things will improve sooner than later," he says.

And, there are exciting times ahead with Disney's impending arrival in the country.

So, is it just the moolah that's driving production houses towards foreign assignments? Crest's top honcho concedes that the business volumes and scalability offered by international markets are robust. He says, "One of the strengths of animation is that it is a universal medium. It is not culturally sensitive and can be easily dubbed in various languages. Take the case of Jakers. Besides PBS (US), BBC (UK), TF1 (France), ABC (Australia), Discovery Kids (Latin America) and TVO (Ontario) have also signed up for broadcast."

The lack of a co-production treaty is an issue that has been nagging the animation industry for a long time. As a producer with enough co-production experience, Madhavan has this to say, "The coming together of an overseas and an Indian financier to jointly finance the same project would be a significant development in film financing — it would entail the formation of international lending consortiums, identification of rights of each financier, security creation and the like," he adds.

As for the high turnover rate among workers in the animation industry, Madhavan says, "The Indian animation industry has recently seen a rising demand for animation content. Given the dearth of good creative talent, players have resorted to luring existing talent (read poaching). However, at Crest, we have been lucky to experience attrition rates far below industry standards. We think retaining talent depends on compensation policy, work culture and the creative challenges offered to employees; and we always work hard at all three."

Getting down to basics, he says industry players feel that the inclusion of animation in the school curriculum and the setting up of animation universities will offer better career options for the Indian youth.

"The remuneration is excellent and comparable to the best across all sectors. Moreover, there is going to be a rise in demand for animators. I would reckon that we have less than 5,000 good animators in the industry. Also, computer animation offers better career potential as compared to traditional animation. Given the right direction, India may well become the digital back-office of the world in the coming years — the scope is immense."

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