The year 2012 will reset the pace of growth of Indias gaming and animation businesses. What happened in mature game and movie markets like the US, Europe and Japan over three decades will take place in India in a much shorter time, and the coming year will be the inflection point. 

Cost-effective Smartphones, computing devices, the internet and social media will fuel the appetite for games, animated content and consoles among young and the older alike. People have started consuming such content even on DTH (direct to home) TV platforms. 

Developed markets moved gradually, from coinoperated arcade machines to computer games to consoles to games on handheld devices, internet games, mobile games and social games. In India, it is sort of happening in one go and all these platforms are going to push the growth of the industry in a big way, says Rajesh Rao, CEO of Dhruva Interactive. 

The year 2011 upped the ante in animation for full length feature films. Tintin, Rango, Puss in Boots, Kung Fu Panda 2, Rio, Cars 2, Happy Feet 2, Smurfs and Gnomeo & Juliet took animation to a new level. 

Biren Ghose, country head of Technicolor India, says India has a hand in many of these movies. India also worked on movies in the Harry Potter, Pirates of the Caribbean and X-Men series. This is a quantum jump in the level of expertise and a tribute to local artists and technicians, he says. 

Technicolor India did a significant amount of work for DreamWorks Animations Puss in Boots. The Indian crew included animators, lighting artists, special effects experts, atmosphere and volume metric experts, image rendering specialists, secondary animation experts and simulation specialists. 

Ghose says a lot more visual effects work will happen in India. The estimate is over 20 major international titles will have value addition from Indian VFX studios, he said. India is a lower cost destination for global film studios, and talent too is rapidly improving . The growing domestic market is also spurring animation action. 

Rajiv Vaishnav, vice president in IT industry body Nasscom, says 2012 will also see a major mindset change. The outlook for the industry is changing with parents increasingly allowing their children to pursue careers in animation, visual effects, graphics or game development. It was an eye opener for the industry when a parent came along with his son to a recent Nasscom game developer conference in Pune, he says. 

Many co-production treaties have been signed by leading Indian animation and gaming players like DQ Entertainment, Crest Animation, Technicolor Bangalore, Green Gold, Tata Elxsi, Red Chillies, Prime Focus, Rhythm & Hues, Anibrains and Toons Animation with studios and producers in Canada, Britain, America and many parts of Asia. 

The impact of these agreements will unfold next year and beyond. AnimationSutra.com  hopes for some great animations happening in 2012.