With plenty of outsourced animation work coming to India and Indian animation movies coming of age, lucrative opportunities exist for entrepreneurs in this sunrise sector
When the Hollywood movie The Golden Compass opened in theaters across the globe in 2007,
the film caught the fancy of many cinemagoers who were stunned by its special effects—many of which were made by Rhythm & Hues, an animation studio in Mumbai. A year later, the Daniel Craig and Nicole Kidman starrer won the Academy Award for its visual effects, giving a thumbs up to the Indian animation industry, projected to grow to Rs 4,200 crore by 2009. The size of the global market is likely to touch Rs 400,000 crore by 2010.
Top Hollywood production houses such as Walt Disney, Warner Brothers, Universal, Paramount and Sony regularly outsource animation work to Indian companies. The country’s cheap labor and top-class production standards are making India an attractive outsourcing hub for many international animation behemoths. Bollywood too has given the Indian animation business a new lease of life with movies such as Hanuman, Roadside Romeo and Ganesha. The first Indian animation movie, Hanuman, was produced at a cost of approximately Rs 5 crore and went on to do business worth Rs 12-13 crore. With big business opportunities waiting to be tapped, the sector is an attractive one for entrepreneurs.
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What is the animation process?
The animation process is divided into three stages—pre-production, production and post-production. The cost of equipment used at the post-production stage is quite expensive.
Pre-production: This involves concept development, character development and creating a storyboard for 2D animation. Voice-overs for characters are also recorded at this stage.
Production: The production department deals with compositing (for 2D animation), staging, animation, lighting, particle animation, rendering and compositing (for 3D animation), texturing, rendering and rigging.
Post-production: Post-production involves editing, adding special effects, music, sub-titling, and digital intermediate.The business
After setting up an animation studio, you can work on multiple business models. A majority of the studios work only on projects they get from their overseas customers. Alternatively, you can produce your own movies and TV serials. But this involves risk in terms of returns as the success largely depends on box office or TRP ratings.
Outsourcing: With large production houses abroad focusing heavily on cutting costs, more and more animation work is coming to India, making it a big back office for such work. Big names such as Warner Brothers, Sony Pictures, and Walt Disney now outsource work to India. Animators in the US cost about $125 an hour whereas in India they cost $25 an hour. Other outsourcing destinations are China, Korea and the Philippines.
The pre-production part is done by the client itself. Indian companies do more of the production work. They get paid on a per minute basis to per project basis. However, this business is not like any other outsourcing business. It requires creative skills as well. As Jai Natrajan, EVP-Business Development at Maya Entertainment says, “Animation is a techno-creative field. It is a combination of technology and creativity. It is a misconception that if you are successful in the IT field, you can do a BPO kind of a thing with animation. Only people from creative fields or knowledge domain can apply their experience to this industry.”
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Creating your own IP: This is still an emerging business in India. The work here involves the whole gamut of producing the film right from the concept stage. Not all studios in India have the bandwidth to work on this model as it requires huge investments. As only a handful of animation movies are made in India, there is not enough business right now, but it is expected that the sector would see boom time soon. This is because more producers are willing to commit money to such ventures and also the box-office performance of such movies is improving. According to industry sources, around 100 animation movies are planned for the next two years.
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written by weGif, December 10, 2009
Photo Animation Software
Picture Animator
written by Rohith, July 20, 2009
My self Rohith from bangalore i am pusuing animation cource from past few months, in order to this i want to know how much do the fresh animator will be paid in india and also in lond, it will be great usefull to me if you can give me feed back on this,
Pls reply to my mail ID: rohithreddy8@yahoo.com
Thanks and regards
Rohith.K
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