Annie Award nominations

'Kung Fu Panda' masters the field, drawing 17 nominations, far more than other comers for the annual prizes in animation.

"Bolt," "Kung Fu Panda," "Wall-E," "Waltz With Bashir" and "9.99" were nominated Monday by the International Animated Film Society for best animated feature for the 36th annual Annie Awards. The awards honor the year's best animated features, TV productions, commercials, video games and short subjects.

DreamWorks Animation's' "Kung Fu Panda" received 17 nominations, more than any other film. In addition to best animated feature, the box-office hit earned recognition in the character animation, character design, directing, music, production design, storyboarding, voice acting and writing categories.

Walt Disney Animation Studio's current hit "Bolt" received nine nominations, and Pixar Animation Studio's summer blockbuster "Wall-E" earned eight.

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Animation bonanza for film buffs

KOLKATA: Over the week starting Sunday, the city will have the rare opportunity of catching up on some extremely offbeat short films including some cutting-edge animation work at Nandan.

The festival is being organised jointly by Chitrabani (an initiative of the missionaries who run St Xavier's Collegiate School) and the Nandan authorities that will help budding film-makers from across the country showcase their work. Incidentally, a large number of animation films have been selected as part of the pantheon.

While a majority of the films have been shot by students from Kolkata, there are several entries from other cities and even foreign countries like UK, US and Bangladesh.

The shortest film to be screened is an animation of 31 seconds and the longest a tragedy of 43 minutes, 36 seconds. The city directors are students learning filmmaking at institutes like Jadavpur University, Calcutta University, St Xavier's College, Chitrabani, Roopkala Kendro and Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute.

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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/

Animation parks to create 2 lakh jobs in 3 yrs: Assocham

Setting up of animation parks with studios for animation movie making can generate employment opportunities for two lakh skilled workers in the next three years, industry body Assocham has said.

"The parks could alone generate employment opportunities for skilled animators to the extent of a minimum of two lakh in next three years," a study paper by Assocham said.

Currently, the Indian animation industry employs anything between 9,000 and 15,000 animators and needs another 30,000 manpower immediately.

India would need skilled professionals like creative animator, conceptualiser, visualiser, 3D modeller, character designer, digital effects artist etc, who can handle multimedia software such as 3D Studio Max, Maya and Tictactoon, it added.

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