Animation Industrial Township in India

The time has arrived from economic standpoint to identify the pace of Information Technology Industry, Live Action Film Industry and Animation Industry. In the past three decades Information Technology, Live Action Films and Animation have gone through massive technological advancements that result in mature industry. These three can’t continue to co-exist in a city considering macro economics. A city’s ecosystem is inclined toward the majority business. Economic growth influence standard of living. Newly found collective financial independence influence the culture of the city in support of the majority business. Information Technology industry is the majority business in Bangalore. Film Industry is the majority business in Mumbai.

Some of you might be wondering why didn’t the Animation Industry co-exist with the Live Action Film Industry? After all both are movies and many Live Action Movies use visual effects that are computer graphics. Visual Effects is an extension of Live Action Movies. Some of the footage is shot in real and some of the image is computer generated. The budget, time and returns are accordingly estimated. Animation movie process is different from Visual Effects movies.

Animation is a resource exhaustive and time consuming process. Animation demands everything visible in the frame, to be artificially made. It feeds on a huge amount of raw product for pre-production. It also requires a huge creative team working on costly computers, tablets, hardware and software. Take a look at the credit roll of any Hollywood Animation Film to find out the huge number of people working in a single movie (approximately 4000 creative professionals).

You may argue that at the time of Covid-19 pandemic, the whole world is transitioning into a new normal lifestyle promoting work from home. The 3D Animation Industry is computer generated graphics. Shouldn’t everyone be working from their home instead? We need to understand the field of animation in little more detail to be in a position to reply to this question.

Animation process can be broadly categorized in three parts, pre-production, production and post production. I’ll explain a small instance of the exhaustive pre-production process that is being followed, to reveal the depth of “physically collaborative work” that goes into creating Grade-A 3D Animation Film.

Every Movie begin with a good script and a screenplay. A team of screenplay writers, a group of theatrical artists and a team of storyboard artists, all three teams work in collaboration in an animation film. An animation film is a series of skits with exaggerated expression and exaggerated body movements. The theatrical artists role play again and again over days on screen play artist base draft until the movements are perfected. Alongside the storyboard artists sketch and also capture the missing stunts out of their imagination. Another team of creative professionals collect photographs and videos for every object (asset) and scene. Mood boards are created. Every object is hand drawn in caricature form. This is the reason, collaborating on a blank sheet of paper is so important at the commencement.

It is also important to understand that although 3D Animation movies are made on computers, they may not survive the IT city pace financially. An Animation movie’s fate is decided on Friday night Box Office release. Two years of work by 4000 creative professionals is decided on the date of release.

The IT products are not released at once. Take the example of Facebook. Facebook is 16 years old. It was launched back in 2004. Over the years it has grown so big. At the time of launch the financial commitments were very less. The failure won’t affect the deep pockets of investors.

Over the last 5 years with the advancement in internet broadband connectivity, many startups in India have moved to mid tier towns to avoid high rent, congestion and employee maintenance. This is to escape the chaos of big cities. The cost of living has decreased and the standard of living has improved, as almost everything is available in mid tier cities in India these days.

The new generation industries are smokeless. The townships are non-symmetrical and non-vertical. Symmetry by visual is a primitive notion of township planning. The new township planning grows around the aspirations and joy of communities. Organic growth of architecture and landscape results in self sustaining. Organic Townships may not turn to industrial ghost towns as the industry goes through transformation in due time.

Animation sector is timely positioned on a growth trajectory with the boom in OTT platforms, investment in indigenous gaming and soaring online video content publishing. Government must bestow due recognition to the animation industry along with a world podium in the form of an Animation industrial township to improve visibility, attracting foreign and domestic funding.