When I think about putting all my thoughts down on the Indian animation industry in one article, I am reminded of the time when in the late 1980s KLM airline asked me to make a film about their Delhi golf tournament. I had a single camera unit and the task of covering all 18 holes through four days with one camera. It seemed daunting.

It is interesting to note that the commencement of animation in India was not far behind the onset of live action cinema. In 1912, Dada Saheb Phalke made, The Growth of a Pea Plant, using stop-motion techniques and officially marked the launch of Indian animation. While live action cinema flourished and became the staple diet of the Indian entertainment industry, animation somehow did not achieve the same status. With the success of Hanuman, there seems to be a renewed interest among audiences and story tellers alike toward this unique form of entertainment.

With so many animated films being announced, in production and release, I wonder what the true personality of an animated film produced in India should or could be. Walt Disney took his inspiration from European fairly tales and illustrators of his time for his early films. Japanese animation, commonly known as Anime, was inspired by immensely popular indigenous Manga comics. Each of them have gone their own way in choosing stories, characters, and defining the look of their animated films. Besides cultural influences, definitions were also formed by the availability or lack thereof, of financing and the taste of audiences.

Animated storytelling is a form of a visual communication exercise. Therefore, the audience certainly needs to be taken into consideration. I believe that the true characteristic of Indian animation lies in the definition of an ordinary Indian child.

Once we understand the audience we want to address, the rest of the process becomes easier, but certainly not easy. Telling a story with believable characters that only live in virtual environments inside a computer or are hand drawn on a piece of paper is a mammoth and challenging task. With the recent failures of animated features, people have begun to wonder if the Indian audience is accepting animated storytelling. Is it entirely true? We in India have been using narrative visual storytelling for a long time. The Indian tradition of storytelling accompanied by painted panels can be traced back to at least the second century BC. Panels used in traditions like Pata Chitras are akin to still frames of an animated film with narration. Understanding and meeting the expectations of audiences should be the prime focus in establishing animation as a viable industry.

I was talking to a professor who had recently shown an animated film to some villages. The film dealt with the prevention of malaria and had multiple shots of mosquitoes devouring human blood in extreme close ups. The film did not seem to work. After conducting some studies they were amazed to learn that villagers did not give any importance to the film because to them, the mosquitoes they were dealing with in their villages were not as big as the ones they saw on screen, and they decided that the methods depicted in the educational film did not apply to them.

This story also brings to focus the importance of establishing a relationship between the characters and the desired audience. It is easier to focus the camera in a living human being and without effort have the audience relate to the person on screen. They understand that the representation is that of a living being. They know that the person on screen breathes, gets hurt, and has emotions like their own. Getting the same association established to a drawn figure or computer-generated figure is a greater challenge.

But as we have seen in the evolution of animation storytelling worldwide, there comes the magic moment when the computer-generated or drawn images on screen become alive for the audience. They begin to breathe and live in their minds. And that is when the animated films become an accepted form of engrossing storytelling. We as an industry have yet to cross that barrier and overcoming this barrier is not a small challenge. It is one thing to understand the audience but to be able to successfully translate that understanding to an animated film is entirely a different story. This is where the multi-faceted skill set required to create a successful animated film comes in to play. The magic lies in the various ingredients that make an animated film. Besides the story, the characters, locations, layouts, the camera, lighting, sounds, and various other skills are needed.

We as an industry have made some inroads into each one of these aspects, but a comparison with matured animation industries clearly demonstrates our shortcomings. The danger lies in not recognizing our true capabilities. Evolution of animation in various countries around the world had to go through similar issues. Luckily for us, there is someone who has already done it - done it their own way. Now we need to find our own way.

Technology certainly plays an important role in bringing a storyteller's vision to life. But it is not about technology alone. At the root of all successes lies one simple fact, and that is having a good story to tell.

A great example of such misplaced emphasis is a film called Hoodwinked. From a design perspective, the film scores very low points but in spite of its shortcomings, it went on to become a favorite of audiences worldwide. Why? Because people loved the story. I spent two years of my life working on a film called Club Wild Life at Disney, which was canned after an expense of almost USD 27 million (Rs. 135 crore). The reason: Story. The story just didn't work. The first time directors that Disney had hired forgot the simple mantra of a successful animated film. The three things that make a successful film are story, story, and story. From a technological perspective, it was fabulous but wisely the Disney executives realized that it is better not to have a film than to have a film that just does not work for audiences. In short, what animation in any market needs is a deep understanding of the stories, characters, and audience. Making audiences laugh and cry with a drawn or computer-generated character on screen is challenging but not a challenge that can't be overcome.

We need storytellers who are able to create characters and stories that make this "make believe world" real for people. We need artists who create paintings as not only a means of self expression, but to support the characters in the story. We need animators who not only know how to draw but are actors them selves. Overall, we need directors who understand animation as a medium and are able to guide the team in the right direction. Animation designed for Indians and by Indians is the way to go. While we build the infrastructure and the skills required to make the next generation of animated films, we have to look deeper into ourselves as to who we are as a people.

As the famous Japanese anime director Hayao Miyazaki puts it: "I believe that children's souls are the inheritors of historical memory from previous generations. It's just that as they grow older and experience the everyday world that memory sinks lower and lower. I feel I need to make a film that reaches down to that level. If I could do that I would die happy."