31000000000 Animated Enough?

BACK IN 1912, DADASAHEB Phalke, considered the father of Indian cinema, created the first Indian animation. He exposed single frames and shot once a day, for a month, a pea growing into a pod-laden plant. The Birth of a Pea Plant, filmed using the time-lapse technique, was never released, though it helped Phalke get financial backing for Raja Harishchandra, India’s first full-length feature film.

The Indian animation industry has advanced over the last century, boasting a compounded annual growth of 21% since 2008. It is today a Rs 3,100 crore business, with global links. Studios such as Technicolor India and Tata Elxsi’s Visual Computing Labs have entered the big league by being part of international movie and TV projects such as Puss in Boots and The GummiBear, respectively. There have also been local movie productions such as Ramayana: The Legend of Prince Rama (1992), Hanuman (2005), Roadside Romeo (2008), Toonpur ka Superhero (2010), and more recently, UTV Disney’s Arjun: The Warrior Prince and GreenGold Animation’s Chhota Bheem and the Curse of Damyaan, made in partnership with PVR Pictures.

But is India anywhere close to developing its own idiom of animation? Chetan Sharma, who runs Animagic, a Mumbai-based studio that has worked with Turner International, argues India needs one, if only to stand out globally. Obvious examples of standout animation idiom are the Japanese anime, Polish experimental style (Walerian Borowczyk, Jan Lenica, Zbigniew Rybczynski, etc.), and sometimes even the stuff that Disney, Pixar, and Dreamworks Animation conjure (think Tangled, Toy Story, or Shrek).

The trouble is, despite Phalke’s pioneering work—he got there before Walt Disney did—Indian animation flourished only after it became part of a global supply chain. “India has long been part of the distributed manufacturing model,” says S. Nagarajan, COO, Visual Computing Labs, Tata Elxsi. “Some of the preproduction and creative aspects are done in the West and the rest in India.”

So, as his colleague, creative director Pankaj Khandpur, says, the Indian style sort of evolved from the exposure animators and designers got from working on outsourced overseas projects—and they never developed a distinct local style.

That may explain why international animated films tend to outperform the local ones. “Good animation requires attention to detail,” says an executive from Dreamworks’ dedicated unit in India, who did not want to be named. “The industry [in India] has never cared for such quality or detail and animation has suffered. India needs time to grow.”

He adds that audience economics is critical as well, with only 5% to 10% of the population having the money or the inclination to appreciate quality animation.

BUT THE RECENT CRITICAL acclaim of Arjun and Chhota Bheem suggests that India’s animators may have finally found the semblance of an idiom. It lies in India’s rich trove
of stories.

Broadly, there exist two types of animation—the classical shaded 2D look (Lion King) and the photo-realistic 3D look (Kung Fu Panda). Several subjects are dealt with through these styles. “The visual element doesn’t count for much and it is the kind of stories that will set us apart,” says Arnab Chaudhuri, the director of Arjun, and a fan of Japanese anime. “What the Japanese did was to break from traditional fairy tales and start telling adult stories of their own. This stretched the boundaries of animation.”

Animagic’s Sharma, an artist himself, says that was possible because the Japanese were rooted to their culture, and had been drawing line comics for long. “Our drawings have not evolved in the same way; also, the artists need to be clued in to their own culture to bring out the uniqueness. Pop culture versions showing Rama with eight-pack abs or a Hulk-like Hanuman won’t work.”

The key might lie with television channels, which have experimented and reaped huge success with home-grown series such as Chhota Bheem (the movie was a result of the huge fan following), Roll No. 21, Kumbh Karan, Keymon Ache, or Feluda.

“We are seeing new genres being explored in Indian animation, such as humour with Keymon Ache (on Nick India) and mystery with Feluda (Disney India),” says Tapaas Chakravarti, chairman and CEO, DQ Entertainment, one of India’s best-known animation companies.

Then there’s Turner’s Krish, Trish and Baltiboy, where each episode has three stories and each story depicts a folk tale from a particular state. Most important, the style is based on local folk art. Indian culture and settings by themselves are a big pull and elements can be added from classical music and dance. Also useful are shapes, colours, historic locations, and urban details such as autos, rickshaws, trams, and Ambassador cars.

“To create a typical Indian style of animation, you could refer to folk theatre and pick up physical elements that would define it,” says Sharma.

Adds Krishna Desai, director of content, Turner International: “The key to successful intellectual property is how strong your central characters are and how well you narrate the story.”

He says Indian kids relate to characters that are around their age—like the school-going Hanuman and Roll No. 21’s Kris. “These are important things that go into creating a character profile and visual rendering.”

That said, the Indian mindset that animation equals kids’ comedy needs to change. The mature and philosophical treatment of the subject in Arjun will surely pave the way for others. According to DQ Entertainment’s Chakravarti, Hollywood animated movies such as Madagascar, Up, and Ice Age have drawn families as well as adult viewers.

Animators here can take inspiration from India’s IT industry. In its initial years, companies survived on low-end, outsourced jobs and gradually moved up the value chain. Even Japan’s anime art took time to go global, with animators struggling since the ’60s to become relevant on the world stage. Can India go to infinity and beyond?