Animation studio benefits from sales outsourcing

The Indian animation industry is set to boom in the next few years, causing one website to recommend firms to consider sales outsourcing there.

Proactive Investors UK wrote that the growing sophistication of televisions and film will open up the niche entertainment sector to double turnover by 2013, which will be helped by sales outsourcing.

It cited DQ Entertainment, which has used the Indian workforce in Hyderabad to help get its work noted by top global institutions such as the BBC, Discovery Kids and France 2.

"As a result of the transformation of the business model, DQ (currently capitalised at £39.6m) has been able to double its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation margin from 21 per cent to 43 per cent," the website said.

India recently topped a Global Services and Tholons poll to find the best destination for sales outsourcing firms looking to boost their productivity by using a foreign workforce.

Artic;le Source: http://www.pareto.co.uk

Pune has a stake in Indian animation industry's success

PUNE: The next time you watch a Hollywood special-effect movie and marvel at the talent the West has, think again. The man behind the on-screen
spectacle could well be someone sitting in a studio in Pune.

The Indian animation and visual effects (VFX) industry now has clients beyond Hollywood as projects come pouring in from countries like China as well. Pune has a major stake in VFX's success considering the increasing number of animation and visual effects studios in the city.

The latest in line is John Woo's Red Cliff', a Chinese epic that Jesh Krishna Murthy and his team of 45 animators and compositors worked on for about eight months. "Our work in the film is a quantum leap, we have done something different, something that people would not usually connect to India. One of the scenes we worked on was the final battle scene that involved thousands of arrows being shot. Rather than working on each arrow individually we created a tool that enabled us to show a number of arrows together," says Murthy citing an example of the VFX in the film.

Having worked abroad in a number of countries like the US, UK and Germany, Krishnamurthy started his firm Anibrain' in Mumbai about three years ago. Over a year ago, he moved base to Pune with a view to expand operations. "Pune is great because it offers a lot from good weather, accessibility to everything and also some decent talent," says Murthy who has worked on a number of Hollywood projects like Batman Begins' and Lara Croft: Cradle of Life'. His firm, Anibrain, on the other hand has worked on projects like Resident Evil: Extinction' and Death Race' among others, about 25 in total with another eight projects in the pipeline.

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Low cost outsourcing model is not sustainable

Demand for animation content is rising and the sector is expected to grow 30 per cent annually over the next three years, from its current size of $550 million.

"There is also scope for animation companies to exploit from the gaming industry. Besides outsourcing, we are also seeing a surge in domestic demand from kids TV channels and film producers," said DQ Entertainment Tapaas Chakravarti while speaking at Nasscom Animation & Gaming India 2007.

Animation companies in India will have to focus on quality and scalability, other speakers said in a session on "Outsourcing from India.".

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Animation, gaming to join BPO boom

Animation and gaming are seen as the next wave in India’s successful outsourcing story. However, there is a major change: this is a sector which has moved up from outsourcing to co-production, a move up the value chain from low-end, less creative work to higher creativity and advanced technologies, says Krayon Pictures director Namrata Sharma.

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Protecting flash source code

SWF Protect v1.6

No artist whether a singer, painter or even a writer likes to have his/her work stolen and reproduced with minor changes and then claimed as an original by the unscrupulous usurper. But at least in the real world, brick and mortar environment, an artist can at least get his grievances addressed, and get duly compensated for his or work. There are pretty stringent laws like intellectual property rights to that protect works of art and culture against plagiarism and theft. So some policies and laws are there to protect the works of artists and musician, which makes plagiarists and copycats a little weary of stealing works of other people.

But this however, is restricted only to the offline environment. Log onto to the net, and you will realize the absolute wilderness you have entered. The rich bounties information and art are there for the taking. It's a complete free for all and nobody gives a damn, as to whose work he is lifting. Downloading images and animations form the net is as easy as 1-2-3…. So there nothing one to protect his/her works. Legally speaking, there is very little one can do to protect his or her prized works. So if you are so keen to protect your creations, then just keep them away from the net. But by doing this, you will be effectively depriving millions of people from appreciating your talent. Appreciation that could have earned you thousands perhaps hundred of thousands in income, the problem here is that by displaying your work on the net, makes it vulnerable to theft.

So if you have designed an excellent flash based site or beautiful animation to drive up the amount of traffic to your website, it won't take long for crooked souls to steal your flash source make a few minor changes and pander them as their own. There's nothing you would be able to do prevent the travesty. With flash decompiling software programs so easily and readily availing, even a complete novice can rob you of your creations and your countless hours of hard labor, money and talent will be drained away in a jiffy.

But there are a few things you can do to protect your flash animations. All you have to do is to encrypt your animations in such a way, that they can't be decompiled and reused. For doing this, you can use the SWF Protect v1.6. It's a powerful and unique software that will encrypt your flash pages so perfectly that any attempt to download and reuse it will be thwarted. Moreover, encrypting an average flash file takes little less than ten seconds

It's very easy to use the software. And once you have encrypted your flash animations and images, you can upload them on your website, without any fear of them being lifted or stolen. It's practically impossible to lift flash images that have been encrypted with SWF Protect v1.6. Anybody who tries to use decompiling software will only down a pile of utter gibberish and nonsense; which will be absolutely of no use to them whatsoever. With this software you can easily beat powerful and commonly used decompilers like ASV 5.21, SWF Decompiler 3.6 Build 70208, Imperator °FLA v3.5.1 and several others. SWF Protect v1.6. is perfectly compatible Macromedia Flash 8. It is truly an amazing software, priced so modestly that you won't have to think twice, before purchasing them.

Paul
Swfprotect.net

Article Directory: http://www.articlecube.com

British Animation Awards: Call for entries

The British Animation Awards (BAA) 2008, the bi-annual event that brings together all the many and varied sectors of the animation industry together, is gearing up, and entry forms will shortly be available on the BAA website.

Award categories range from student work to music videos, animated commercials and movie title sequences, short and experimental films to voice performance, kids TV, new media, and more.

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Animation films set to take-off in India

Animation film market in India is growing, making inroads into the commercial arena as well. After 'Hanuman', 'Shiva' and 'Krishna', the latest on the Indian animated feature front is 'Icy n Spicy'.

"Animation films in India can be successful. Take the examples of 'Hanuman' and 'Shiva', they have done a good business," says Anil Goyal, producer and director of the film 'Icy n Spicy'.

'Icy n Spicy' is the first 3D mainstream animation film in the country. According to NASSCOM, Indian animation industry is forecast to reach $869 million by 2010.

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Walt Disney rescues hand-drawn animation

Hand-drawn animation, out of fashion in the computer age, experienced a rescue worthy of a fairy tale on Thursday, when Walt Disney animators announced they would bring back the art form to the big screen.

"We will be bringing back hand-drawn (two-dimensional) films," said Disney's Ed Catmull, the President of Pixar and Disney Feature Animation.

Animators refer to hand-drawn animation as "two dimensional," as opposed to computer-generated animation, referred to as 3D.

Pixar created "Toy Story" and other computer animation hits, but was acquired by Walt Disney Co. last year.

Speculation has swirled since then over whether Catmull and Chief Creative Officer John Lasseter, who took control of the ailing Disney animation facility, would reestablish the art form that made Disney the world's preeminenent animator.

All of Disney's feature animation films in production at the time of the Pixar deal were computer animated.

"Now that's we're a year into it, people want to know how it's going," Catmull told analysts at a Disney conference monitored by Web cast. He said Disney would do both computer animation and hand-drawn animation.

Lasseter spent several years as a Disney animator, but left over creative differences to form Pixar, where he was considered the main creative force. He revered Walt Disney, who with a group of legendary animators known as the "Nine Old Men," made such hand-drawn classics as "Cinderella" and "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs."

When Disney bought Pixar to try to revive its flagging animation program, Catmull and Lasseter took charge of both studios, which are run separately.

At least 300 Disney animation staff were laid off or reassigned in the months following the leadership change.

Catmull and Lasseter gave the first descriptions on Thursday on how they reshaped story lines of Disney films already in production, canceled others and restructured how the Disney artists work.

"Pixar is still Pixar -- nobody left," Catmull said. "At Disney, you have these remarkable artists there ... they were not kneaded together in the right way. At the heart of it there has to be a director and the director has to have a vision."

Catmull said there were no plans to merge the studios or to limit them to a certain type of animation.

"We always believed that quality is the best business plan," he said.

He and Lasseter showed clips from upcoming films, including "Ratatouille," "Meet the Robinsons", "Wall-E", "American Dog" and "Toy Story 3."

Source: http://www.obviousnews.com/

Juried Emmy Awards Announced for Individual Achievement in Animation

The Academy of Television Arts & Sciences has announced the Emmy Award winners in Individual Achievement in Animation for the 59th Emmy Awards. These are juried award categories, which have no nominations and will be presented at the 2007 Creative Arts Awards on Sept. 8 at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. This year there were no Emmys awarded in the Outstanding Voice-Over Performance juried area.

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More Classic 2D Animation from John Lasseter and Disney

Disney continues the return to 2D hand-drawn animation under John Lasseter. Neither Disney suit Execs nor Lasseter have provided the reason for the full steam ahead return to traditional animation by the southern California arm of the company but Dimples is happy to see the trend continue. From FilmStew.com:

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Work is play for the animation man

Tapaas Chakravarti loved comics enough to mop up an impressive collection, but for a long time, thought little of making a career out of it. A sales and marketing professional, he had modest ambitions and a low-risk job profile until eight years ago. Then, overtaken by a passion for animation and entertainment, he chucked his job and started DQ Entertainment that has grown into one of India’s largest production houses for animation and visual effects now.

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Rajni's new dimension, a 3D animation flick

Even as Sivaji-The Boss hit theatres with a bang, the trailer of yet another of the superstar's flick was screened rather quietly in theatres around the world-a 3D animation film called Sultan-The Warrior slated for release in 2008-end. The slickly shot 45-second trailer showed an animated character of 'Sultan' Rajnikanth in a brief solo stunt scene flashing a sword and sprouting a dialogue typical of the actor: Kannu Idhu Pudusu (This is new dear).

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Cartoons now available via podcast

Frederator Studios founder Fred Seibert has launched Channel Frederator, the world's first cartoon video podcast created expressly for distribution of content on portable video devices such as the Apple iPod and the Sony PlayStation Portable (PSP). Released weekly, the episodes will contain several short form original and vintage cartoons submitted by producers from around the world, packaged into 10 to 15 minute episodes by the Channel Frederator programming team.

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Animation biz faces reverse outsourcing

With several homespun projects at its disposal, India's animation industry has come of age and could even resort to reverse outsourcing to fill up a talent gap.

"Until recently, Indian companies had been relying on production works outsourced by giants like Disney, Paramount, Imax or Sony," said Sumathi Sreedharan, director of Chennai-based Pentamedia Graphics.

"Now they are confident of taking up pre-production, production, and even post-production on their own," she added.

"Having released around 10 films independently, including Hanuman, Little Krishna, Ramayan, Pandavas, Legend of Buddha, Ali Baba and Son of Ali Baba the more than a dozen big animation houses in the country have many more projects at their disposal," she further said.

Shortage of professionals

"The Rs seven-crore success of Hanuman, which was released in 2005, had proved that Indian audience was grown up for a full-length animation film," said K Chandrashekaran, creative director of Thiruvananthapuram-based Toonz Animation.

"However, the industry that faces a shortage of professionals could go in for reverse outsourcing," he added.

The cost of producing a half-an-hour animated programme in the US and Canada was $2,50,000 to 4,00,000 and $1,20,000 in South Korea and Taiwan, whereas in India it is $60,000.

Though India has an edge over other countries with regard to cost factor, due to the deficit in our talent pool, production could be outsourced to countries like the Philippines, Malaysia and Taiwan.

Independent projects

"An independent survey by Arena Animation Academy has found that there would be a requirement of three lakh professionals in animation and related services by 2008 in the country," claimed R Krishnan, executive director of Aptech Ltd, the parent body of Arena.

"However, the industry currently has only around 20,000 skilled hands," he added.

Global assessment firm Pricewaterhouse Coopers in its recently released report on the Indian entertainment industry, predicted that the animation sector, which now earned Rs 1,200 crore, would mop up Rs 4,200 crore by 2009.

Several independent projects are coming up at animation houses, including ones on filmstars Amitabh Bachchan and Rajnikanth. The film on Big B had been initiated by Toonz.

Source : http://www.ndtvprofit.com/

Japan cartoon industry looks beyond India

Spiralling production costs in India have forced Japan's billion-dollar animation industry to look elsewhere for outsourcing cartoons, including Thailand, Thai media reports said Monday.

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Satyam's Nipuna ties up with British animation firm for films

Nipuna Services Limited, the Satyam Group's BPO subsidiary, has signed a $25 million 'edutainment' deal with 4K Animation Limited of Britain for the execution and delivery of a television series and a film. The contract is one of the largest ever by a global BPO service provider in the animation marketplace.

Nipuna will work with the 4K Animation team for 18 months on two 'iconic' European animation projects: the third season of 'Marvi Hammer Presents National Geographic World', an award-winning, 52-episode television series, and a movie, featuring Marvi Hammer.

The series and movie feature a combination of live action and animation and includes actual studio sets used as animation backgrounds, a furry computer creature and 2D-animated characters.

Hamburg-based YOUA Edutainment, National Geographic, and German broadcaster ZDF will co-produce the series and movie.

More than 120 Nipuna professionals will produce and deliver animation services for the projects. Nipuna will provide VFX, CGI, 3D and 2D animation services, including pre-production, production, and post-production, along with German artists, from its state-of-the-art studio in Chennai.

Nipuna also provides artwork and visualization services involving 2D and/or 3D animation techniques and processes to customers in the engineering, architectural, and medical industries.

Earlier this year, Nipuna signed a $8 million deal with 4K Animation to provide animation services for a movie to be produced in Hollywood.

The 4K Animation Limited is one of the leading animation and special effects companies in Europe.

'This partnership reflects a growing trend toward corporatization in the animation industry, which is leading to increasingly significant opportunities,' said Venkatesh Roddam, Nipuna's chief executive officer.

'Long-term contracts such as this one show that companies recognise Nipuna's capabilities in an industry where human resources are integral to quality, and responsible for the success of creative ventures,' he added.

'Nipuna has been a true partner since we began working with the organisation in early 2006,' Jan Schmidtgen, managing director of 4K Animation said on the occasion.

'Its focus on animation services has resulted in significant expertise in creative business practices. Above all, its flexibility and commitment to quality have helped it exceed our expectations,' he added.

Nipuna has built significant VFX, CGI, and 3D animation skills and has produced films like 'Sainikudu', 'Stalin', 'Pokhiri', and 'Belly Full of Dreams'.

Source: www.offshoringtimes.com