Years and years of toil, perseverance and faith and finally things are paying off! That was the sentiment shared as Hanuman Director V G Samant, Toonboom CEO Joan Vogelsang and Color Chips Chairman Sudhish Rambhotla met at a special function organized by Toonboom Animation Inc to honor special contribution to the development of the Indian animation industry.

The brief ceremony which honored Samant and Rambhotla was held at the Taj Residency at Hyderabad. Rahul Commerce head Dhiren Shah was also presented with the Toonboom trophy.

"Hanuman creator VG Samant was the first person that Toonboom worked with in India" said Joan as she presented Samant with the trophy, adding that " He had tremendous vision and thought ahead of his time which is why he took on our software Tic Tac Toon, which was the first complete paperless software for animation"

"The inputs that our product development team received from Mr Samant as he worked on Hanuman were invaluable to us and helped us evolve the product"

Presenting the award next to Color Chips Chairman Sudish Rambhotla, Joan remarked," Color Chips has been doing a lot of great work in 2D including its work on the Pentamedia feature on Buddha. We wish the studio the best for its upcoming feature on Krishna"

Hanuman creator later told Animation 'xpress that, "All the years of struggle are now paying back and it feels very nice for one's efforts to be acknowledged and appreciated. I shall do all I can for the cause of Indian animation"

Color Chips Rambhotla added, "Even as I get this Toonboom award, I would like to thank Joan and Toonboom for their invaluable support and encouragement of the Indian animaion industry. Things are getting better all round and we are very excited about our 2D animated Krishna which is slated for release in May later this year"

"The movie is directed by acclaimed director Bapu. Close to 40% of the pre production and 20% of the production is complete" he added.

Making a case for the profitability in making local content and features, Toonboom's Vogelsang quipped," A three million dollar return on a one million dollar investment is great business and it is my observation that internationally too there is a growing demand for fresh original content regardless of the scale of the project's budget"