Animation companies forge international tie-ups

South India is fast emerging as an animation hub, courtesy low overhead costs and robust growth of this sector in the domestic and overseas market.Animation companies are scaling up their facilities and forging international tie-ups to meet the market needs. State governments are providing infrastructure to push growth in the sector. The impact: Animation companies are now moving up the value chain. They have transformed themselves from being back-office service providers to suppliers of content and retail products to the world market.“Movies like Ganesha and The Return of Hanuman are indicators of the industry moving up the value chain,” says R Krishnan, Executive Director, Aptech, a company that offers animation training through its brand Arena Animation.Hyderabad-based DQ Entertainment is expanding its footprint globally. The company has made about five films in collaboration with global animation companies such as Moonscoop, Harvey Entertainment, American Greetings and Method Films.Infrastructure needs for such companies are growing, with the forging of international tie-ups. So, the Andhra Pradesh government is looking at creating a 200-acre animation city in Hyderabad by the year-end.The city will also have a Digital Entertainment City Task Force (DECTF), comprising representatives of the industry and state government to monitor the quality of work done by companies.Wipro, meanwhile, is pursuing animation projects from Japan and North America. However, there is huge shortage of trained manpower in this industry.According to a NASSCOM study, India will need over 3 lakh professionals in content development and animation by the year-end to cope with the growing demand. At present, there are only 12,000 professionals in this segment. While low overhead costs make India a hub for outsourcing of post-production work, the talent crunch could take away the cost advantage, say experts. The animation market in India is estimated now at $285 million and is expected to touch $1 billion by 2010.

Arena hosts inter-centre competition & Placement Expo in Delhi

Arena Animation recently organized Creative Minds, an inter centre competition for its North zone students, along with a Placement Expo in New Delhi.The Placement Expo comprised a seminar and aptitude test conducted by award-winning animation studio Rhythm & Hues (India). Apart from this, companies like GETIT Infoservices, Kaliedoscope Entertainment, Vanglez Technologies, SamSoft Solutions, Planman Technologies, Nimble Technologies, Shiva Infotech, Alchemist Film Productions, Web Commerce India etc shortlisted candidates after the first round of interviews and on the basis of the show reel presented by the students.Animators Subhajit Sarkar, Shekher Mukherjee and Subhadarshi Tripathy formed the jury for the Creative Minds competition wherein students showcased their work, which consisted an advertisement design to promote an original brand, either for the print medium or in a multimedia format (Interactive CD Rom Presentation / Animation / Web designing). Awards were given to the best three entries in each of the two categories.Says Arena Animation, North & East territory academic head Indranil Basu, "It has been our constant effort at Arena Animation to prepare our students as industry ready professionals. Through this event we would encourage students to be more focused and professional in their work and attitude. In the competition we looked towards originality, creativity, technical proficiency, presentation skills & time management, etc., the essential ingredients to flourish in the Multimedia industry. The Placement Expo gave them a platform to interact and present their work to HR persons of reputed companies."

Games2Win’s Crapster among Top 5 Orkut applications

After the success of Slapster, Games2Win.com (G2W) recently launched a new Orkut application – Crapster. At 9 pm on July 8, Crapster was listed fourth on the popularity scale among Orkut applications.Crapster is the Social Networking Site (SNS) version of an existing G2W game called Dungfoo Donkey. It took the entire G2W team two weeks to complete Crapster.Games2win Founder and CEO Alok Kejriwal said, “With Slapster’s success, we recognized that users enjoy a bit of spunk, wit and cheekiness. Most of our games are a bit naughty too, and manage to make users laugh as they play.” Remarking on Crapster’s quick success, he added, “Crapster gives users a unique and cheeky way to interact with their friends. It’s an engaging yet light-hearted platform. Users these days don’t take each other too seriously and love to laugh - Crapster allows them to do just that.”Alok further said that very soon G2W applications will be on an array of SNS sites such as Hi-Fi, MySpace, Bebo and Friendster.About the challenges faced while creating Crapster, Alok commented, “Every project is a challenge in that it needs to appeal to our users. Be it in terms of concept, simplicity in usage, level of interaction - the fate of the application lies in the hands of our consumers. We need to understand what users are looking for and deliver just that. Therefore the real challenge begins once we are live. It’s all about the reaction of users, and not so much the action of creating an application.”The next application, he promised, is sure to be just as innovative and unique and will be unveiled soon. G2W creates up to eight new games each month on Games2Win.com and soon plans to double this number. “Our SNS applications have proven to be a big hit and we will continue making our presence felt in this space by exploring more SNS platforms and creating new applications, thus allowing users to interact with each other in a unique G2W way. Our ultimate aim is to deliver one new game each day for users,” Alok concluded. Slapster, G2W's first Orkut application is currently leading in terms of popularity.