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Chandamama
India MD Vishwanathan Reddy
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"Unless it can have the benefit of support from a global
player, Chandamama cannot on its own, think of producing programmes
in animation medium."
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While
Comics and illustrated children's magazines may be big business internationally,
India has had a few strong brands and players. In what is a global trend,
popular characters from comics and story books are lending themselves
very well to the medium of animation.
Do the Indian brands and comics have characters as strong that can be
similarly adapted into animation?
Currently in its 58th year of publication, Chandamama, one of the earliest
children's magazines in the country is a veritable treasure house of stories.
The publishing house became a corporate body in the late 90's and did
consider animation at that time. What were the experiences? What were
the roadblocks?
While in Chennai, Animation 'xpress' Anand Gurnani met up with
Chandamama India MD Vishwanathan Reddy.
Here are excerpts from the chat....
How long has Chandamama been enthralling readers, could you please
enlist the statistics for the benefit of our readers?
Chandamama was launched in 1947, months before India got independence.
The objective was to take India’s heritage and folk tradition closer
to children who were standing on the threshold of freedom and who had
till then been denied of much knowledge of the country’s hoary past
and culture. The magazine first came out in Telugu and Tamil and because
of their popularity, ten more language editions were added in as many
years that followed. Sanskrit, which is generally taken as a dying language,
is one of the languages in which an edition is being published in the
last 21 years with a view to promoting that language among a large interested
group. Recently, an enquiry came from far off Italy for the Sanskrit edition.
For the first time an edition in a tribal language - Santali - is being
published since September 2004. Thus currently, the magazine is coming
out in 13 languages - hailed as a publishing feat anywhere in the world.
A separate magazine for the below 9 years age group, Junior Chandamama
in English, is soon to enter the third year of publication. The National
Readership Survey IV put the readership as 9,400,000 adults besides the
targeted audience of children between 5 and 18.
When did
you first consider lending your content to the animation medium? What
was your experience?
Till the nineties, our country was not ready for animation. Mr. Ram Mohan
of Mumbai could create interest among some Japanese producers to consider
producing the Ramayana as a full length animation feature. In the late
’80s, the publishers of Chandamama were promoting Disney’s interests
in India by publishing Disney comics. One of the group companies was involved
in merchandising and franchising their products and characters. That gave
me an opportunity to visit their studios and study the animation technique,
but I found that the Indian market was not ready to go in for animation
in a big way. TV itself was yet to become so common then.
When
Chandamama became a corporate body in the late ’90s, we started offering
our archival content for syndication, besides going into multimedia to
produce CD-Roms with the object of using story content for educational
purposes - an edutainment endeavour - to reach out to children, entertaining
and educating them.
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A
screen shot of the Chandamama website
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We also thought
of animation as a medium in collaboration with one of the leading international
TV channels to power their children’s segment, both for their website
as well as television. At that time, we had our own in house modest 3D
and 2D facility to develop our own characters and story-board as part
of the understanding we had with the said channel.
Unfortunately, we had to withdraw from the activity when the dotcom went
bust and the said channel called off their arrangement with us. During
that period, I happened to visit quite a few animation production units
who were making a beginning to launch their programmes. It only proves
that animation as part of the entertainment industry must aim at a global
market while serving the local audience. Otherwise the expenditure and
manpower it (animation) demands may not be a viable proposition for any
production unit for the Indian market.
What roadblocks did you face in animation and why did the project not
take off?
Some of the channels were over enthusiastic to join hands with Chandamama
for the Asian market with Indian stories like folklore and mythology created
by Chandamama, but when they sat down to study the time and the cost involved,
they pushed all the projects into cold storage.
Unless it can have the benefit of support from a global player, Chandamama
cannot on its own, despite the fact that it has access to beautiful subjects
in its archives, think of producing programmes in animation medium.
What are your future plans as regards animation?
Today, Toonz in Trivandrum, Pendtamedia in Chennai, besides well-known
units elsewhere in Mumbai and Hyderabad have been trying to come out with
Indian themes. Unfortunately, I have not come across any final product
comparable to programmes produced in Japan, the USA, or countries in Europe.
Here again, I feel it is mainly due to financial and other constraints.
Animation should be an institutionalised effort with the quality of overseas
production in mind. I found most of the units were engaged in providing
job work facility with most of the vital inputs provided by the producers
from the USA or Europe.
Chandamama
is always open to widen its horizon. Content-wise there is plenty that
could be adapted for animation. Writing a story for the print media is
different from creating a theme for multimedia or animation. Each one
is unique as far as the treatment is considered. Yet we are confident
of conveying the subject to suit different medium.
Do you
think that the international model, (wherein famous characters lend themselves
succesfully across formats and mediums) work well in India?
The popularity
of characters, no doubt, take time to establish themselves as icons or
idols. This is what happens in movies, where heroes and heroines easily
become icons. Once the characters become popular, it is easy to go commercial,
with the advantage of revenue generation through merchandising and franchisation
means.
Today we
find so many channels putting out animated programmes. However, it is
only a handful of characters who appeal to children. After American characters
fell out of popularity, we find a lot of Japanese characters gaining in
popularity with the present generation. This is a universal phenomenon.
India is just opening up in the global market. We are influenced by many
things and we find children becoming addicted to cartoons on TV. After
all, India is part of the global trend.
Additional
comments...
It has come to a stage where we see 2D and 3D techniques being boldly
integrated by the animation industry these days to make it more dynamic
and realistic. This development may increase the cost of production further
for any regional production unit to consider a full length animation film.
Unless we are able to come somewhere closer to American or Japanese animation,
quality-wise, Indian animation industry, I am afraid, can only become
a service provider for producers abroad. We cannot be producers ourselves
in our own capacity.
However,
what I am able to gather from the trade journals is
that many of the Indian animation
units have inked contracts with overseas producers and tried to expand
their manpower and capacities. I only wish that some of these units are
also involved in creating software for Channels abroad and do their best
to get India’s animation industry due recognition. We all know that
India does not lack talent. It is my dream that India should set a new
trend in presenting themes with positive messages, instead of just filling
time-slots with violence and morbidity.
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