With more players offering courses in animation and special visual effects, things are looking up for the Indian animation industry.

According to Tapaas Chakravarti, Chairman of DQ Entertainment International, the quality of animation produced by Indian companies has seen a quantum jump, as is evident from the number of co-production agreements being entered into by Indian producers. For, entertainment giants like Walt Disney, IMAX and Sony have increasingly been outsourcing work on cartoon characters and special visual effects to India. Many other players in the industry are outsourcing animation for commercials and computer games.

So it was hardly a surprise when last week when Chamber of Commerce and Industries, Grand Hainaut, France, launched DSK Supinfocom, a 20-acre campus in Pune to offer full-time and vocational courses in animation, apart from video-game design and industrial design. DSK would largely cater to the film industry needs. We have the talent in India, but no many good institutes to nurture it. We will encourage students to become entrepreneurs in this industry, says D S Kulkarni, Chairman and MD, DSK Group. The trainers for the institute will be recruited on a full-time basis from France and Europe. The five year course at DSK Supinfocom will cost students Rs 25 lakh. The institute says short term courses will not be feasible for students as animation requires indepth study and analysis.

However, short term courses are available in the market. Aptech Limited, the number two player in the Indian IT training market, has targeted the multimedia, gaming and animation training segment with its brands like Arena and the Maya Academy of Advanced Cinematics (MAAC), to offer a range of courses. Aptechs Arena and MAAC, which commands 80 per cent market share in this segment are predicted by Crisil to grow at a three-year CAGR of 12.4 per cent to Rs 168 crore in 2012-13 and contribute 55 per cent to total revenues in the same year. Currently, there are 170 arena centres and 70 MAAC centers in India. Arena also has 52 international centers. With a lot of animation work being outsourced to India, there is a good demand for multimedia courses. We also see growth in small towns where youngsters are eager to learn, says Ninad Karpe, Managing Director, Aptech Ltd.

Karpe feels that one can become a web designer with an Internet connection and a computer. Aptech has growth plans lined up for both its brands. Currently, Arena is in around 19 countries and Aptech has plans to take the MAAC to international shores as well. We see a lot of demand for our services and products in Vietnam, South Korea and Japan, explains Karpe. Arena charges Rs 1.10 lakh for the bachelors degree in animation and Rs 2 lakh for a course in 3D animation.

At filmmaker Subhash Ghai s Whistling Woods International (WWI), animation courses have been running for the past five years and 100 students have graduated. WWI has a two-year animation programme and has two intakes per year. The programme costs anywhere between Rs 2.75 lakh and Rs 10 lakh. Whistling Woods claims that it has been rated one of the top 10 film schools in the world by The Hollywood Reporter. Our strength is that we teach animation film-making, not just animation. We offer a specialization within animation, in the areas of lighting, texturing, compositing, rigging, modelling or a combination of all, says Chaitanya Chinchlikar, Vice President, Business Development at WWI. While the students are able to work on any area of the animation film-making pipeline, they have a core specialisation or skill-set, adds Chinchlikar.

So is the industry getting what it needs? Not exactly. Chinchlikar believes that the biggest problem with animation education in India is the fact that it is treated like vocational education. Animation is, perhaps, the hardest form of film making, where only your imagination restricts you. The animation industry in India is at a very nascent stage and allows huge potential for an animation aspirant. However the domestic conception of Indian content is yet to pick up. Martin Ruyant, Principal, Head of Studies (Animation) at DSK Supinfocom believes that short-term courses provided in India are not enough. We need more courses, which are not just academic-centric, but concentrate on a students artistic ability, says Ruyant. According to industry players despite many students opting to work out of India, the Indian animation sector is facing a skill gap.

Chinchlikar explains, Based on the number of students trained by animation and VFX institutes in India, there are approximately 150,000 to 200,000 students who finish animation courses every year. So here is an industry that has 100 times oversupply of fresh talent every year. But despite this oversupply, it still faces a crunch in hiring fresh talent, leading to poaching and ridiculous hikes in personnel costs, which lead to bad financial costing of the films.

According to a KPMG report, in 2011, the animation industry is expected to be a Rs 1,140 crore industry up from Rs 1000 crore in 2010. With studios such as DQ entertainment, Prime Focus, Pixion and Reliance Mediaworks expanding significantly to scale up operations to undertake 3D content development services, it is just the beginning of the Indian animation industry.