For a variety of reasons, 2005 will be remembered as a landmark year in Indian animation, chief amongst them being Hanuman. The Indian Box Office success of the Silvertoons created, Sahara Percept produced 2D feature Hanuman has made the monkey God a torch bearer for all those following the original content path in the Indian animation industry.

2005 will also be remembered for Crest announcing 3 feature films through its wholly owned US subsidiary Rich Crest and for the complete 'script to screen' work that Paprikaas animation sudios did for the 90 minute 3D animated Italian feature
X Ed Lo.

2005 will also be remembered for Crest announcing 3 feature films through its wholly owned US subsidiary Rich Crest and for the complete 'script to screen' work that Paprikaas animation studios did for the 90 minute 3D animated Italian feature
X Ed Lo.

Moderated by Crest CEO Madhavan, the session on animated theatrical movies included Hanuman director VG Samant, Toonz Animation India Creative Director Atul Rao and Paprikaas Animation Studios CEO Nandish Domlur.

While the success of Hanuman is there for all to see, it was equally impressive watching a stunning presentation of art work and assets that Paprikaas did for the Italian Feature which releases this May.

"Technology is a vital and critical component of animation today and striking partnerships with Technology companies will become very essential for the success of studios in the future" remarked Paprikaas CEO Domlur citing the example of Dreamworks which has partnerships with HP & AMD

Amongst some more interesting information that Domlur shared was the fact that the key differentiators on his Italian feature project were the import of key talent, art directors and designers from overseas and the involvement of the programming and coding team in resolving bottlenecks.

Another interesting bit of info on the Italian project was that while the scratch voice tracks were recorded in India, nearly 70% of them were retained and made it to the final master.

Veteran V G Samant, director of Hanuman urged the industry to acquaint themselves with the history of Indian animation. "It is very important for us to know the history of Indian animation and we need to act on the basis of that"

"Right from the 60s through to the 80s we were all very happy with our own work, no competition, no thoughts of growing the market and doing our own features. All this while the other Asian markets like Japan, Phillipines and Korea were evolving. It was only after 96 that Indian animation gained some amount of seriousness as an industry."

The veteran had flowery praise for Sahara and Percept. "We went through a lot of struggle and trials during working on Hanuman and I really must give a lot of credit to both Sahara and Percept for making this project see the light of the day as well as for marketing it brilliantly and making it a household name"

Toonz Creative Director Atul Rao who has worked in numerous LA based studios prior to his post at Toonz had some creative insights to share.

"The term original is often misused and misunderstood he said, most of the times when we say original we refer Individual style of presentation, narration or design" said Rao.

Rao interacted with the audience asking them to recollect the celebrity voices of famous animated characters, with the objective of Dispelling some notions about the need for big budgets and celebrity voices and VFX to make a hit feature.

Earlier on Madhavan while opening the session drew light upon US Box Office figures that indicated a much higher financial return on 3D features as compared to 2D. He also drew attention to the number of 3D features slated for release this year what with close to a staggering 12 releases lined up.