Indian Animation Turns Spotlight on Local Stories

MUMBAI (Reuters Life!) - When the Cartoon Network channel launched in India more than a decade ago, it simply dubbed its shows in regional languages.

But it soon realized there was a market for local content and tapped Indian animation firms for shows such as "Krishna Balarama" on a Hindu god and "Tenali Raman," a popular folk hero who was a 16th century court jester.

Last year, parent Turner International, in a maiden effort, set up a multi-million dollar unit in India to develop and produce animated films and original live action TV series.

"The opportunity in developing local animation content is significant," said Samir Patil, chief executive of ACK Media, which was recently commissioned by Turner to produce two animated films and a TV series based on popular Indian folk tales and mythology from the Amar Chitra Katha comic books.

The animation industry in India, including entertainment, visual effects and gaming, is estimated at about $500 million and forecast to double by 2012, according to financial services firm Ernst & Young. The entertainment segment is likely to grow at 18 percent annually.

Animation in India, driven by lower costs and software expertise, was largely limited to low-end work such as title credits, special effects and brushing up of scenes created in Hollywood studios. Original work was rare or of poor quality.

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India's Animation Ind Seen At $1 bln By 2012-Report

MUMBAI, Aug 26 (Reuters) - India's animation industry is expected to hit $1 billion by 2012 and the gaming industry would touch $830 million then, aided by increased outsourcing and a growing domestic market, a report released on Wednesday said.

The Indian animation market, estimated at $494 million in 2008, is seen growing at a compounded annual growth rate of 22 percent till 2012, a report by National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM) and Ernst & Young said.

"The industry will witness a dip in growth rates for two years before becoming a billion dollar industry by 2012," Farokh Balsara, Partner & National Leader-Media & Entertainment Practice with Ernst & Young, said at a media briefing, referring to the animation industry.

The gaming industry was estimated at $167 million in 2008 and is seen growing at a compounded rate of 49 percent yearly to hit $830 million by 2012, the report added.

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RPT- India's Animation Ind Seen At $1 Bln by 2012-Report

MUMBAI, Aug 26 (Reuters) - India's animation industry is expected to hit $1 billion by 2012 and the gaming industry would touch $830 million then, aided by increased outsourcing and a growing domestic market, a report released on Wednesday said.

The Indian animation market, estimated at $494 million in 2008, is seen growing at a compounded annual growth rate of 22 percent till 2012, a report by National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM) and Ernst & Young said.

"The industry will witness a dip in growth rates for two years before becoming a billion dollar industry by 2012," Farokh Balsara, Partner & National Leader-Media & Entertainment Practice with Ernst & Young, said at a media briefing, referring to the animation industry.

The gaming industry was estimated at $167 million in 2008 and is seen growing at a compounded rate of 49 percent yearly to hit $830 million by 2012, the report added.

The expectation that the entertainment industry would be relatively isolated from the economic downturn has been disproved as the spending patterns were hit by the financial crunch hurting the growth rates, Som Mittal, Nasscom's president, said.

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Roadside Romeo makes it to animation Oscars' shortlist

Indian film industry has just bagged its first nomination at the prestigious Visual Effects Society (VES) awards, known as the Oscars of the animation and visual effects industry.

India’s first full length animation 3D film, Roadside Romeo, co-produced by Yash Raj Films and Disney, has been nominated in the ‘Outstanding Animation in an Animated Motion Picture’ category alongside big Hollywood animation films such as Dreamworks’ Kung-fu Panda and Disney’s Wall-E.

Tata Elxsi, the Bangalore-based VFX arm of the Tata Group, has done the entire animation for the film and a large contingent from the company is heading to Los Angeles for the awards, which are scheduled just a day before the Oscar night on February 21.

“This is the Oscars for us. When we heard the news of nomination, we felt so proud of our achievement. Just the fact that our name and our work was in the same category as the legendary Dreamworks and Pixar was unbelievable. Having said that, we always knew while making Roadside Romeo that we were doing something special. But I guess it’s just the Indian humility that we remain in awe of the work done by these big studios,” said Pankaj Khandpur, creative director of Visual Computing Labs (VCL).

Khandpur’s excitement also comes from the fact that this is the first time that a property created in India has been nominated for VES awards for excellence in visual effects and animation. Though Khandpur could barely contain his excitement, he assured us that he and his team double checked that they were the first to notch a nomination in any category at VES.

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Animation industry set for high growth

Indian animation industry is expected to record USD1163 million by 2012, as against USD460 million, reporting a CAGR of 27 per cent,according to a report jointly prepared by NASSCOM and Ernst andYoung. The report, christened Indian Animation and Gaming 2008, divided the animation market into entertainment USD120 million, education USD53 million, custom content development USD187 million and multimedia/web design USD100 million.

While it had projected an annual growth rate of 40 per cent for education segment, the gaming industry is poised to grow at a CAGR of 50 per cent.

With all the groundwork already in place, the domestic animation and gaming industry is on the threshold of growth. With improved skill set and the ability to develop and produce high quality work, the industry has moved up the value chain, Ernst andYoungs National Leader Media andEntertainment Practice Farokh Balsara said.

He further added that with the change in the intellectual property ownership, the rights of animation will be retained by the developers enabling them to exploit alternative revenue streams like merchandising and sale of digital platforms.

Though the players in the animation and gaming sectors are bullish over future opportunities, they need to address some of the vital challenges like quality manpower, high attrition rates, cost of consoles, lack of bandwidth, acclimatizing the people about original IP internet protocol, lack of content variety and dependence on outsourcing, the report pointed out.

Source : http://www.offshoringtimes.com/

Indian animation industy seeing more domestic demand

Bangalore (PTI): The Indian animation industry, which works on the outsourcing model, is now looking at growing demand for the domestic market and creating original content for the home market in the country.

The industry, which was a bit late in entering the animation race, is now seeing some significant changes in terms of availability of homegrown talent, growing pool of resources with specific skills catering to various segments of the industry and a more structured training infrastructure to hone the talent.

The success of films like 'Hanuman' and 'My Friend Ganesh' and animation forming an important part of the storyline in blockbusters like 'Krissh', 'Thoda Pyaar Thoda Magic' are part of the changing storyline of the animation industry in the country, said Chetan, Director of Ants (Animation Training School).

Source : http://www.hindu.com/

Mythology is heart & soul of Indian animation

NEW DELHI: “I hope we never lose sight of one thing, it was all started by a mouse.”––Walt Disney.

It took a mouse for Walt Disney to kickstart the $60-billion global animation industry. Back home, mythological heroes like Hanuman, Ganesha and Krishna have done that and more for the Rs 1,300-crore Indian animation genre, as per KPMG estimates. Mythology has virtually become a crutch for the risk-averse industry loathe to experiment with original storylines and characters.

Currently, as many as 15 animation movies are in the works for release starting end-2008—Arjun (UTV), Return of Ravana, Untitled movie on Lord Krishna (Percept Picture), Jumbo (Phoebus Media Creations), Krishna (Rakeysh Mehra) and Friends and The Trap (Dream Studio)—and most of them are mythological.

“When a concept is successful, everyone follows it. Plus, mythology provides readily available storyline, well-defined, easy-to-recall characters that instantly click with the core audience of 4-14 years,” reasons Shailendra Singh, MD, Percept Holdings, producers of Hanuman and Hanuman Returns.

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Big boom seen in animation sector

NEW DELHI: American IT firm Hewlett-Packard is predicting a big boom in India’s animation industry with companies now willing to move away from outsourcing projects from the US and Europe to their own co-productions.

Anurag Gupta, country manager (workstations, personal systems group), Hewlett-Packard India, said the entry of domestic firms into co-production is luring international giants such as Walt Disney to the country.

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Indian animators on their way to creating original animation content

The Indian animators are creating original animation content that is being accepted internationally, said Uttam Pal Singh, an independent film maker who is producing tv commercials, broadcast designs, and internet series especially Channel [V], while addressing the students on the last day of the two-days animation event, Treasureboxx08 here today.

An NID graduate, Uttam Pal Singh did post graduation in animation in 2000 and his first film ‘Bheeru No.1’ brought many national and international awards, and later as a part of Channel [V] his ‘Santa Banta series’ won him many accolades, who shared his quest to produce funny stories and create original contents and intellectual properties for the international masses.

He talked about his journey in creation of various tv series including his latest production, ‘Krazy Keeda’ for Hungama Channel.

The BIG Animation team of Rohan Pannalkar and Rajesh Bhosale, talked about the making of the 3D animation film, Little Krishna, produced by the India Heritage Foundation, which won two BAF awards as Best TV Episode and for Outstanding Indian content, recently.

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Warner Bros to make its first Indian animation

In the last few years, the Indian animation industry has seen some big names make their presence felt. Warner Bros Pictures is the latest entrant in the animation space, with an untitled film, which is to be directed by Jyotin Goel and produced by Goel Screencraft.

Warner Bros is one of the most successful motion picture studios in the world and has been entertaining global audiences for over 85 years with high-quality, innovative, acclaimed motion pictures.

"We are delighted to associate with Jyotin on this film,” said Blaise Fernandes, country manager, Warner Bros India. “It marks our entry into the animation genre in India."

Goel has directed films such as Zahreelay and Inam Dus Hazar, besides the popular sci-fi TV show Antariksh. He is also associated with two filmmaking firms Goel Screencraft (as a proprietor) and Goel Cine Corporation (as a partner).

Speaking about his latest venture Goel said, "This is a story of love and adventure, full of colour, music, drama and comedy. The film is not based on humans, but portrays the melodious world of birds and attempts to explore their lives from an unusual standpoint. It is a journey into the lives of birds as they soar over dense jungles and teeming cities, giving them a point of view of the world that is hilariously different from ours."

The postproduction of the film will be handled by Interactive Realities International Private Limited (IRIPL).

Source : http://sify.com/

Talent is the buzzword for Indian animation industry

New Delhi, June 23 (IANS) Lack of skilled talent and big-budget projects are the main roadblocks for the Indian animation industry to sustain its robust growth that has seen its revenue multiply manifold to $306 million, experts maintain. “There has been a boom in the animation industry in the last three years but we have still room to improve upon the quality. If we compare our works with the West, their projects show finesse because of the budget involved,” Amit Sharma of Rhythm and Hues told IANS on the sidelines of an animation seminar organised by Maya Academy of Advanced Cinematics (MAAC) here.

“In India, animation is considered to be a medium for fast money and you don’t get quality exposure. The time constraint and the low-budget for the project also hampers the quality,” added Sharma.

Deepak Ganguly from Tata Elxsi echoed the same saying: “Quality gets hampered by the stiff deadlines.”

However, V.K. Gupta, Sr. Pipeline Technical Director at Big Animation, stresses more on story telling.

He said: “In animation, story telling is the main thing. The quality parameter is very subjective. It is the director at the end of the day who decides what quality is needed.”

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First indigenous animation film Dashavatar ready

Dashavatar is the first indigenously made animation film.

Phoebus Media Pvt. Ltd's animation-mythological feature film Dashavatar which is scheduled for 13 June release is the first indigenously made animation film.

Shatrughan Sinha has done the narration for Dashavatar. Besides Shatrughan Sinha, other actors who did voice-overs for different characters are Sachin Khedekar for the character 'Lord Vishnu', Shreyas Talpade for 'Narad', Rupali Ganguly for 'Apsara', Tom Alter for 'Parshuram', Shishir Sharma for 'Bali Raja', Kenneth Desai for 'Lord Indra', Vinay Apte for 'Kansa' and Ashish Vidyarthi for 'Hiranakshyapu'.

The story of Dashavatar is based on ten incarnations of Lord Vishnu, directed by Bhavik & produced by Vimal Shah of Anushvi Productions in association with Rahul Bakshi of Phoebus Creations Media Pvt. Ltd.

Dashavatar weaves together the fascinating stories of Ram, Krishna, Parshuram, Vaman, Narsimha, Buddha and also the tales of Vishnu in earlier avatars - Matsya, Kurma and Varaha and Kalki Avatar!

Dashavatar would enthrall the world when they will see that Ram and Krishna are two out of a legion of ten. It is an odyssey through time, showing the values of the old world matching the sensibilities of the modern one.

Dashavatar is a film that would have instant universal appeal for its entertainment value, sensible content, technical finesse and production values of international standards.

The Indian animation industry today is merely scratching the surface of our vast treasure of stories and the one with the largest canvas is Dashavatar, with its ten superheroes pitted against the vilest villains ever.

Source : http://entertainment.oneindia.in/