Animators and graphics artists at MEL working on the new machines

The underlining difference between machinery and manpower is that you can scale up infrastructure and equipment at will, simply by investing money. The same cannot be done in the case of skilled manpower.

Even as an increasing number of Indian studios are getting in International work, the ugly face of the shortage of skilled manpower refuses to bury its head. While each studio works out its own plans to meet their specific needs, the Ketan Mehta promoted Maya Entertainment Limited has gone ahead with its plans to scale up infrastructure. The studio feels that this helps it optimise its output, in the continous battle against deadlines.

A shot of a section of the new equipment installed at MEL

MEL CEO Rajesh Turakhia told Animation 'xpress,,"As it is there is a shortage of animators. By scaling up our technology to get it on par with the best in the world, we can at least attempt to optimise our output. MEL has invested Rs3.5crores for this expansion. The expansion shall be in 3 phases, the first of which has been implemented."

"We have installed 50 machines, that will be used by 80 animators working in 2 shifts. This is a complete integrated solution with Intel Xeon chipset using Nacona technology. The rendering blade servers are Intel and there is high speed networking with a 1gHZ cabling installed which has a speed of 10by 1000"