Ashish Kulkarni

"There will evolve more mature ways of relationships between studios and talent "

Half a glass full, or half a glass empty, the difference is in how you see things.

An hour spent with Ashish Kulkarni, one of the prime movers and shakers in the Indian Animation Industry and one cannot avoid getting affected by his optimism and conviction.

The debacle of several studios (big & small) in the last few months is a big and important question. Commenting on the issue, Kulkarni shares that "Life for the last few months has not been easy. I still wake up in the middle of night thinking about how to put all the hard working artists back in the creative environment. It's a different challenge to train the talent pool and make them production ready, its another challenge to keep the highly experienced & productive talent engaged all the time"

Convinced that the Indian animation scene has matured, Kulkarni who foresees a great future points out, "I feel greatly relieved and satisfied that the maturity amongst the talent pool in India has evolved over the years. I have a great regard for all those animation artists who stick around and complete the projects. The artists have matured and become more responsible, the production pipelines have evolved, Indian studios have delivered quality projects and on time. I foresee a great future for the Indian animation industry"

Animation 'xpress' Anand Gurnani met up with Ashish Kulkarni while he was in Mumbai adjudging for an animation awards function.

Here are excerpts from the conversation

Jadooworks was one of the top 4 animation studios in the country. What went wrong?
I wish to refrain from commenting on it.

What about the artists that you had been working with for so many years?
Some of them have taken up jobs elsewhere, many of them are utilizing the time to create their own short films.

Well then what about your future plans?
I am in the midst of making a business plan; I have spoken to most of the prospective clients and plan to set up a high-end digital animation studio that will cater to the animation long form and feature film market. Given an opportunity, I would like to help all the artists who worked with me in the past and those who aspire to work on high quality long form animation and feature films. I would like to really see that they are constantly working so that they keep up with their production tempos.

My plan is to set up a fully animated feature film facility and also create original content from India. I am also involved in raising fund for creating and acquiring original animation content.


You have been actively involved with the industry for the past 6-7 years. What has been your experience?
I feel all the animation players in India have put in their best efforts by constantly marketing their services and delivering in the last 6-7 years, against all odds. All the existing studios have been able to create and establish the brand called India on the international animation front. It was not easy at all. 6 years ago we faced a lot of hurdles in pushing the industry, we had to create a brand for India in the global market and on the home turf we also had to spread across the message to parents & artists that animation was a great career. Only now, that we are able to understand the nature & challenges of animation industry. We have got used to the ups and downs of the production cycles.

My experience, particularly in establishing the state of the art production pipeline, process automation for efficient working and production tracking was very good. The capability of developing the proprietary tools & plug-ins is a big achievement. This unique combination of creative & technical teams to ease out the pressures on the artist will take the Indian studios far ahead of its competition.

What do you foresee for the future?
We are at a threshold in India right now when the artists have consistently delivered great quality work, it is time now to nurture most of the experienced artists to get into feature film production and get the new talent from various schools to do television and DTH production. We all have started with 2D, moved to 3D and Flash productions for broadcast quality. Worked on stabilizing the deliveries and progressively are moving on to DTH & feature film productions.

What I really foresee is that there would emerge a few big studios that would get into feature film production by end of 2006 and early 2007. I foresee that as a bright future for the Indian animation industry & the beginning of a new era.

The launch of the new TV networks and a deeper penetration of animation content in APAC regions is of a significant importance to the animation industry in this part of the world. Most of the stakeholders and the networks would soon look for original content from ASIAN region. This is the time that most of the creative talent can start creating original ideas and take the help of the studios to take these ideas for international production.

How will this happen?
I would like to say that the core teams would get attached to the bigger studios & most of them would constantly work on project basis. But long-term contracts cannot be ruled out. Great artists will always find long-term contracts/ relationships with studios. There would evolve more mature ways of relationships between studios and talent where both of them would be contractually bound and would ensure the well being of the talent as well as ensure the completion of the productions.

I foresee in the next few years a lot more expatriates from the western world and experienced producers and directors moving to India to work on several projects and the Indian animation talent will have a first hand experience of working with most of the producers and directors not through the internet but on the studio in India. I also see placement of a high-end creative Indian talent in the pre production teams in Europe and the US. I feel it is a significant step for India to be a part of the pre production process.

Indians are capable of becoming producers also rather than doing just the BPO kind of operations consistently. I understand that there would emerge a co-existence of service work and IP creation with most of the studios in the years to come. The positive side is that many studios and experienced professionals in animation are looking at a niche of IP creation alone as a business model and what India really needs is few serious joint ventures with the entertainment giants from the west and few Indian corporations to look at diversifying or logically expanding into animation as a serious business.

While talking about the future, I would also like to emphasize on the need to focus on quality.

What about it?
I sincerely believe that, "If content is King, then quality is queen. Timely delivery is the prince and communication is the princess".

Nothing in the creative world would be really respected or successful if we don't look into the quality aspect. Two other important factors are communication with the artists and directors, and production teams ensuring timely delivery.

What about the talent base? What about training?
I have been spending good amount of my time visiting various cities and small towns to address the students and their parents on making careers in animation. It's been a very encouraging time for the industry to really see a great support from the media and especially the effort by all animation educational academies trying to spread the message on careers in animation and reaching out to the smaller centers.

The biggest hurdle had been convincing the parents that their child by drawing painting, sculpting and acting could make a serious and successful career. By virtue of being in animation, the work created by these young artists sitting in India will be watched and appreciated by global audiences for years to come.

Over the past 3 years we have established a good amount of penetration of animation training schools all over India and built an ecosystem for the industry. Secondly we have done timely analysis and course correction in the curriculums to cater to the industry needs, we anticipate that the existing effort in training will not only bring in a fresh and production ready talent pool but also add 1000 to 1500 artists every year for the next 3 years and the number is bound to grow beyond 2008.

A positive thing about India is that the industry is growing in several cities. The first few studios had started in Mumbai, Hyderabad and Chennai and then into Trivandrum, New Delhi and Bangalore and now Kolkata, Pune and Nagpur are getting added as production destinations, this way the talent pool is getting to know about animation as a career and having an opportunity to work closer to the hometowns. Of course the high-end creative talent will associate themselves with the bigger studios doing high-end work and would be willing to relocate.

In contrast the trend has been very different in many countries where the concentration has been mostly in & around one major city in the country.

Having said all that, I also wish to point out that we still require establishing a proper university recognized long term degree course after 12th for animation art and filmmaking. We also need to train the trainers. The biggest weakness that we had was the quality of trainers. While most of the good and experienced talent was always busy with production deadlines. The nurturing of the new talent is generally not done full-heartedly. We need to define a rotation programme amongst the high end & specialized industry-experienced artists to visit training institutes in the region and share knowledge regularly. This I believe is of outmost importance especially in the areas of animation, lighting, rigging, texturing, story boarding, character design, styling etc.

What message would you have for aspiring animators and artists?
We have mostly seen that the sense of timing and acting in new animators is hard to find. Nobody tells them how the learning of all the process from "script to screen" is important for the first few years. How an artist can map the special skills they posses to the area of specialization? I have seen that each and every person wants to become an animator.

An animator's requirement is the sense of timing, proportion, acting & composition. A great sculptor must concentrate on becoming a 3D modeler. A good painter can concentrate on texturing skills. A good break-dancer may become a rigging artist…. just joking. A good architect can be a set designer. A good painter with lighting sense can concentrate on becoming a lighting expert and experiment with various lighting tools in the software.

We had to concentrate and spend valuable resources within the studio to sharpen these skills so far. Now the training institutes must concentrate on these areas & the studios in the region must send the best talent as a visiting faculty to the institutes to ensure the fine results.

At the same time most of the talent is in a hurry to get on to the studios to work. The guidance must be provided at the institute level to do more then one course before getting into the studio. If the doctors have to spend 5 years for MBBS, two years in internship & two years for specialization, even before they start operating on their own. How can we take it so easy in animation to do short cuts in 6-9 months and get into the production? The basics in film making frame by frame, scene composition, acting, lighting, expression, camera & each and every aspect has to be learned before stepping into the studio.

The large number of youngsters jumping into the animation sector considering it to be a multimedia and multi-stream opportunity mostly ends up in them spending a lot of money and no jobs. This is my serious concern.

My advice to the parents and young artists inspiring into making a career into animation is that, one must select the right course, complete multiple courses and specialize in the interest areas and then step into the studio. After all, selecting to be a professional in animation is stepping into the serious business of film making with universal appeal. The developing budgets for broadcast quality content per minute can rang from $10,000 low end to $ 40,000 for high end animation from script to screen. For the fully animated feature films its been over one million US dollars per minute.

How do you expect that the studio to take a chance by selecting a young artist who is not trained enough to create animation to match these quality and high budgetary content development!

There have been quite a few figures about the size of the Indian animation industry and the potential. What do you make of them?

My background has been in media analysis & space selling and so I respect all the figures that have been put out after a lot of research. These figures were put together in 2002 projecting revenues for the next 5-6 years. We have already lost 3 years discussing and disputing these figures. The time has come that we sit together and talk about how to achieve the figures rather than dispute them. Else we will have to put up with the lower figures and be contented with them.

It is high time that the top 20 IT companies and top 20 industry houses start looking at investment in animation seriously in some form or the other. It is just about time, for the consolidation within the Indian animation industry. We have already seen a great response from advertising agencies, ad filmmakers and live action producers. In the last few years you must have definitely seen India cinema using a lot more animation, the frequency of animated advertising films has increased on Indian television. An overall appetite and acceptance of animated content has certainly increased in the Asian region.

At the same time, we must encourage the top 10 global TV networks, entertainment companies and gaming companies to have an India strategy and relationships with Indian studios. This will help establish a higher degree of quality standards in the overall system.

I think that this is the most appropriate time for the Indian animation industry to position itself in the global arena. If we get delayed, the global industry will position India differently.

Animation 'xpress is an Indiantelevision.com Publication

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