Animation is an emerging field where one can explore his or her creativity or power of imagination. It has not just remained in the periphery of movies and advertisements as the use of animation is being done in different kinds of professional fields. Sectors including aviation, medical, information technology, architecture, hospitality, banking or insurance, use graphics extensively for professional presentations.
Coming up of several production houses taking keen interest in producing not just animated films and commercials for a global audience but the increasing popularity of on line and mobile games have also added to the growth of animation industry and raised demand for professionals.
Another factor that has added to the phenomenal growth of animation industry is the anticipated rise of gaming, an allied industry. Be it metro cities or small towns, the gaming industry is rapidly becoming popular with not just youngsters, but serious gamers making the most of gaming and animation world All in all, expansion of the industry means that the time is ripe for students having creative inclination to dabble into virtual world and with fun!
Growing demand for skilled professionals:
In the last couple of years, awareness about a career in animation has grown manifold, with more and more students opting for the animation industry. Traditionally it was presumed that only student’s from fine arts or mass media background opted for a career in animation but today we have students from arts, science, commerce and other streams opting for animation as a career of choice.
Animation courses in 2D which include mobile games and cartoons or 3D which teach about architectural walk through, television commercials, movies and special effects, have indeed opened up great job opportunities for young aspirants.
Career avenues on a rise:
This rise in awareness has mainly come about as a result of the growing reputation of India as a quality place to outsource animation work to. Production for films including the Lord of the Rings, the Harry Potter series, The Chronicles of Narnia, and Spiderman 3 have taken place in India during the recent years. What also works in the favor of the growth of the animation industry is the anticipated phenomenal growth of an allied industry - the gaming industry - that is expected to grow by about 36 per cent in the next four years. There are over 400-odd animation and visual effects companies currently in the country and most them would need trained work force who are not only good at production skills but also have solid understanding of storytelling and film making.
Slowly companies are graduating from outsourcing to co-production model; the film apha and omega being a case in point. The animation industry has recently asked the information and broadcasting ministry to sign co-production treaties with 30 countries that are active players in animation and graphics. If the co-production treaty goes through it would allow us to work with big players in animation like Malaysia, Singapore, Korea, Japan, Canada etc.
Going forward a lot of animation companies would start developing content for digital distribution on multiple platforms on web and mobile. Merchandising also plays a large role in monetizing animation property. This new revenue streams will help the companies to de-risk themselves. Foreign players like Disney have been very successful in monetizing animated properties. In contrast, Indian merchandising is yet to pick up, this would mean that the industry would need talented resources to conceptualize and develop owned content.
“Like the Hollywood, Bollywood movies are also becoming animation/ VFX intense, with the budgets for the post production in movies increasing we see the business graph of animation and VFX production going higher than expected.”
Other factors which would lead to demand in content is the rising number of TV channels, greater accessibility to internet, proliferation of mobile devices that leads to the popularity of video and gaming content are set to offer a huge potential for animation and character licensing.
All in all, the growth of the industry means that the time is perhaps the ripest it has been in recent years for students interested in dabbling with the virtual world.
Main Factors contributing to the growth:
There are two factors that would drive the growth of the animation industry: high-skilled workers and low cost of production.
At present, most Indian companies are graduating from traditional outsourcing to co-production model. Besides this, experts believe that custom content development would be a large segment, going forward. 3-D mobile games are also gaining popularity and it is expected that the future of the animation industry lies in this segment as well.
Prabhanjan Chappar is the Business Head Youth verticals – ZICA, ZIMA at Zee Learn Limited.
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