The emergence of an organized animation production sector, highly skilled personnel, and substantially lower costs, are propelling India toward becoming a high-quality low-cost animation hub

After a period of slowdown, the Indian animation industry is set to boom - with the country slowly but steadily being acknowledged as growing into a potential low-cost but high-quality animation hub.

The Indian industry has almost acquired the status of being preferred outsourcing destination. The emergence of an organized animation-production sector, the ability to offer top quality work required by international productions houses, the substantially lower costs, the highly skilled and English-speaking personnel, the legacy of rich traditional literature and culture, are major influences.

However, cost arbitrage is the most important and attractive value proposition for India as an animation and gaming-content development destination. India offers a 60-80 percent cost saving for the international studios outsourcing/off shoring to studios in the country.

What is remarkable is that Indian animation companies are catering to the best of international studios and are being praised for their creativity and technical skills.

3D has generated enthusiasm among studios, broadcasters, games developers and consumer electronics manufacturers alike. The new wave of 3D movies being released theatrically has the industry scrambling to accommodate 3D content at home.

The rush towards equipping screens with 3D was driven by the release of Avatar in December 2009 and has done much to convince exhibitors that at least some proportion of their screens should be equipped with 3D.

The usage of this content has gradually increased in various end-user segments, such as advertisements/commercials, feature films, TV programs, and computer/online games, where animation solutions have found a place in niche areas - special effects, film titling, TV broadcast graphics, 3D modeling, Web entertainment programs and background development. Some of the issues in implementation of 3D are:

• Consumers will need to invest in a new display to watch 3D content at home.
• Glasses-based technologies will dominate the emerging market for 3D-capable displays but will eventually be superseded by auto stereoscopic ('glasses-less') solutions as these become viable.
• The adoption curve for 3D-capable displays will be determined by standardization efforts for content delivery and compression.
• Blu-ray disc is the clear frontrunner for distribution of 3D movies to homes.
• 3D broadcasting will take longer to arrive, given the constraints around bandwidth and production budgets.
• The prevalence of early adopters in games market means 3D games may arrive in the home, sooner than 3D movies or TV programming.

Overall, 3D content will be slow to proliferate due to the size of the addressable market and the incremental production costs associated with 3D, as well as the requirement for the industry to learn a new visual vocabulary.

The key challenges before the animation industry are piracy and lack of IP protection rights; and an acute lack of resources, investments and Government support. Slack IP laws and weak enforcement mean that studios can expect leakage of revenue at every stage.

The Indian animation companies and animation studios have been trying to move up the value chain to create their own intellectual property rights and partner with international studios to produce animated properties for the global audience. One of the most important trends that we see emerging is an effort toward making animation for adults rather than simply narrative fiction for children.

The successful run of global animation movies that have released globally, including India, recently have demonstrated the scope and commercial appeal of intellectual properties. This reinforces the significant potential for Indian animation companies to develop their own global intellectual properties. The growing popularity of animation films in India, which has lately been leveraged by the Indian animation industry and which has been inspired to focus on such productions.

India, definitely, has the potential to widen the animation industry. Animation is among the few entertainment media whose popularity transcends age. Fast-paced technological advancements have ensured that computer animation finds wide appeal among audiences of all classes and ages. Animation software tools, used for creating computer-generated outputs, are expected to benefit from the intensifying activity in the animation industry.

Use of animation software across various market verticals - films, television broadcasting, video game development, web designing, training and education services, and corporate communications will be critical to its growth. Government needs to support the industry in terms of tax exemptions for animation studios and exhibitors. Companies should invest in features which are made in India, and made for India.

Indian animation industry needs to be categorized as a product-industry. But as an overwhelming number of companies are in the small-and-medium category, which by-and-large are satisfied with providing outsourced services, the industry tends to be seen and categorized as a service industry.

"The animation industry in India is slowly coming out of the clutches of recession and flourishing again. We can see a vibrant market, and players keen on striking deals. There is also a lot of interest from international players. This has raised the bar - both in terms of the quality of animation, and the quality of the story line. In this backdrop, a lot of technological hurdles need to be crossed. We need to embrace production pipelines that match the demand for better output and need to supplement that with the right mix of hardware and software. Animation is no longer purely an art, it is art perfected by technology."

Asokan. K.R.
Manager- Systems,
Toonz Animation India Pvt. Ltd.