Animation: the illusion of skill

Consider this. There are about 300 animation companies in

India currently, employing 12,000 people. Another 3,000 work on a freelance basis. A recent Nasscom report predicts the animation industry will need 25,000 skilled professionals by 2010. Good news, right?

Wrong. If industry estimates are anything to go by, the animation industry in India, pegged at Rs 11 billion in 2006, has the potential to grow at 22% and reach Rs 29 billion by 2011. But the big issue facing the techno-creative business is that it does not have the kind of skilled manpower needed to drive this tremendous growth.

The reason is that India has only a handful of institutes teaching high-end animation techniques. At last count, there are about 500-odd private animation-training institutes across the country, besides a few government-run colleges with animation as part of their curriculum.

Says Pankaj Khandpur, head, Visual Computing Labs, the youngest division of Tata Elxsi that provides animation, visual effects and games services to the worldwide entertainment industry, ?The Indian animator can be easily as good as any in the world. The talent certainly exists, what he or she needs now is experience, exposure, the relevant training. There is a huge lacuna in good training in India; almost all the animation courses in India are vocation or function-based. What is needed is a more holistic approach, one that is more encompassing, rigorous, and above all, measurable.?

Popular animation technologies like 2D and 3D animation technology are labour intensive, though 3D is less so.

A one-second animated spot, for example, entails 24 stills or frames.

As in all things, time and speed are of the essence. Says P Jayakumar, CEO, Toonz Animation, a leading animation company, ?If the industry does not shape up with regard to building the right talent and skills it will lose competitive advantage to emerging outsourcing markets elsewhere.?

Of course, animation-training institutes are mushrooming across India, but they have no common standard, rue industry insiders. Hatim Adenwala, senior vice-president, human resources, DQ Entertainment, ?In our experience of hiring, most of the time we have to retrain students coming out of the institutes in India as the skill sets are often not 100% in line with global industry standards.?

While recruiters blame institutes for not preparing students on what to expect from a production environment, students blame lack of professionalism among the faculty as well as the limited international exposure for their lot.

Says Manvendra Shukul, CEO, Lakshya Digital, a four-year-old video gaming development company, ?The (training) institutes run like business ventures, and in addition to the recruiters, it is the students who have a raw deal as despite paying more than a lakh a year for a course in animation, they are still not ?production ready? by the time they come out.? Analysts say India may end up cutting a sorry figure with international clients such as Electronic Arts, Microsoft, Disney and Sony, which outsource work to India, if their artistes are unable to meet their exacting standards.

However, the issue of right training does not end with devising a robust training module. Shukul feels that an institute cannot churn out good talent unless students have some basic skills and aptitude to begin with.

The flipside of the coin is the availability of quality faculty.

Experienced production people usually do not want to get into training?as a result more complex and specialised topics such as texture, characterisation, rigging are not being taught at the institutes.

These problems are compounded by the fact that institutes have huge overhead costs to meet?be it the real estate cost as most institutes are in tier 1 and tier 2 cities, or the software and hardware enhancements that are required on a regular basis.

Thankfully, attrition is not an issue with animation and gaming companies. Once the right talent is identified and nurtured and recruited into the organisation, employees tend to stick around. Starting salaries for youngsters could be anywhere between Rs 20,000 and Rs 25,000 per month and growth is promising.

There are institutes such as the largely government-funded National Institute of Design (NID), which produce highly-skilled creative artistes in animation who get involved from the pre-production stage of the projects they undertake. However, only 35 students pass out every year from NID (graduate and post-graduate programmes combined) and the reason for this, according to NID director Darlie O Koshy, is ?inadequate investment from corporate houses?.

Things are beginning to change, albeit slowly. Corporate house are realising the merit of partnering with training institutes in things such as developing the curriculum and providing guest faculty. ?This way they can become more meaningful to each other,? says Shukul of Lakshya Digital.

The gaming company, for example, has partnered with Academy of Animation and Gaming (AAG), an animation-training institute started in 2007 in the national capital region, in developing and imparting a training module. It hopes to see the result in ?the improved quality of students? it is able to hire from AAG after they graduate from the institute.

AAG has two flagship programmes that are popular with aspiring animation students. The first one is the three-year, full-time BSc in Animation, which costs students about Rs 3.8 lakh and the other is the two-year diploma programme that costs Rs 1.8-lakh. Frameboxx, a Delhi-based, animation training institute with franchisees all over the country, has programmes ranging from six to 18 months and with fees ranging from Rs 60,000 to Rs 1.8 lakh.

Frameboxx has an incubation centre where students work only on live-project assignments for a few months before going out and starting their real job with a production studio. Students certainly have an animated future, if they wish to invest in the field.