India's animation boom: ten years ago, May 2008

May 2008

Article: India's animation boom: ten years ago, India's animation industry was keen to promote the "Brand India" label, a pitch that suggested the quality of work might be better than foreigners imagined. These days, nearly all the major animation studios in the world have some kind of presence in India or make use of Indian facilities and personnel.(Animation Focus)(Company overview)
Article from:Asia Image Article date:May 1, 2008 Author:Wanvari, Anil CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2009 Reed Business Information, Inc. (US). This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights or concerns about this content should be directed to Customer Support. (Hide copyright information) Related articles



The Indian animation industry is poised to attain a market size of Rs.40 billion (US$980 million) within the next four years from the current Rs.13 billion (US$320 million), according to a report by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (FICCI) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC).

At present, India has about 200 animation, 40VFX and 35 game development studios, but the country needs more workstations to make optimal use of the industry's potential, especially with the fast growth that the Indian animation industry is poised for after the development of some very advanced software.

Indian animation movie production suffered several setbacks in the past. In 1984, renowned artiste Ram Mohan applied to make an animation movie on the Indian epic Ramayana in collaboration with the Japanese filmmaker Yogo Sako.

Mohan was denied permission by the government. The government said that the sanctity of the epic would be lost if a "cartoon film" was made on it. Finally, Mohan went to Japan to make it as he and Sako were determined to present the Ramayana as an animation series.

The movie, "Ramayan" executed under Mohan's leadership made the Western world aware for the first time of talent available in India to make animation movies. Subsequently, India saw an outsourcing boom.

But, due to the high cost involved, together with shortage of manpower and technology, animation movie making stagnated after "Ramayan" was released. Although animation studios sprang up in Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Thiruvananthapuram, they were preoccupied with outsourcing work.

Some of them did create story-based animated work, but these were meant only for advertising commercials. It was only since 2000 that corporate houses set their sights on producing animation movies. UTV was the first corporate entity to plan animated versions of the popular "Amar Chitra Katha" series in the 1990s. But the project did not get off the ground.

A decade later Percept Picture Company (PPC) brought to India its Hanuman series of animation features--"Hanuman" and "Hanuman Returns." Made on a budget of about Rs.15 million (US$347,000), PPC's first animation movie "Hanuman" went on to earn Rs.70 million …