Technicolor/Thomson has announced that they have formed a strategic alliance with DreamWorks Animation to set-up a dedicated studio at Paprikaas in Bangalore. Thomson, recently invested in Paprikaas, through their Technicolor business and now with the assistance of DreamWorks Animation, is committed to building on the potential of the existing creative and technical talent base in India to develop a world-class animation studio. DreamWorks will help in building the technology & infrastructure, recruitment, training and on-site creative supervision. Paprikaas will recruit over 300 people in the next 12- 18 months and a part of which will be dedicated for the DreamWorks projects and the rest will be inducted into Paprikaas, taking the total headcount to over five hundred.

Paprikaas CEO Nandish Domlur, Thomson India VP Thierry Pasquet, Technicolor President Ahmad Ouri & DreamWorks Animation's Joe Aguilar

With this alliance Paprikaas & Technicolor aligns itself to focus on four areas - Paprikaas Animation, DreamWorks Animation dedicated unit, Paprikaas Interactive working on Video Games and Paprikaas VFX for Moving Picture Company, London - Technicolor's Visual Effects arm that handles work on live action films and commercials - making it India's most diverse digital content services company.

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Nandish Domlur, CEO. Paprikaas, said, "We are extremely pleased to be partnering with DreamWorks Animation and we see this as a major turning point in the Indian animation industry. Over the years we have built Paprikaas as an organization that delivers high quality animation by paying attention to minute details. India has a plethora of talented artists with creative skills and technical knowledge and Paprikaas will be the ideal environment to hone those skills. We have already begun the recruitment process for professionals with experience for senior positions. We are very excited to be part of this 'dream team' and in getting an opportunity to be part of DreamWorks forthcoming productions."

"The raw talent pool is there and the only thing missing is the high end training. Of course there are the few sparks of excellence we see but the challenge is to get the scalability. The key solution if we have to be succesfull in the global animation space, is the import of very high level experienced International talent and it is not just artistic training but technology, processes, pipeline, the entire thing." He added.

Speaking first and exclusively to AnimationXpress.com, DreamWorks Animation's Joe Aguiliar shared, "We will have top talent from DWA as well as from all over the world come into Paprikaas and build the pipelines, the technology and nurture the talent to the quality benchmarks that DreamWorks has. There will be two pipelines at Paprikaas, one being the DWA Pipeline that will work exclusively on DWA projects and the other will be the Paprikaas animation pipeline which will work on the other Paprikaas projects. While the DWA pipeline will use the company's proprietary tools and technology, the Paprikaas pipeline will have 3rd part software but the workflow and technology assistance will be common to both pipelines."

"The International team that we will be sending to Paprikaas for training and nurturing the talent and pipelines here will be a combination of top talent from the studio as well as from all around the globe. We have recruited top talent from the likes of Gobelins and Sup Infocom whom we would have loved to have working with us at DWA in the US, but we are training them at Glendale and they will be coming down to India to be a core part of the DWA pipeline at Paprikaas. We will be bringing in a lot of top level talent here for building the team plus we will be leveraging our relationships with schools like SUP Infocom which are setting up in India to add to the whole training effort" he added.

Joe also shared that the DWA Pipeline at Paprikaas once it got in shape, would be involved from layout onwards to final delivery of images.

Technicolor President Ahmad Quri shared, " From the Thomson Technicolor perspective, Paprikaas is the hub and base for all our services into India . The tieup with DWA came about with the studio wanting to have an additional capacity to support their projects and growth moving forward and this coincided with our interest in the content creation space. Our VFX interest was furthered through our acquisition of MPC, gaming has grown organically at the company which recently worked on AAA titles like God of War-2 for Sony Computer Entertainment, and the animation interest has been through our investment in Paprikaas. At Thomson Technicolor we have had a historic relationship with Dream Works and Dream Works Animation and we look forward to their support and involvement that will help us advance the Paprikaas entity in terms of training, pipelines, recruitment and technology which will eventually lead to a dedicated team DreamWorks Animation unit that will work exclusively on DreamWorks Animation projects in India"

On being asked about the timelines for when the DWA Pipeline at Paprikaas would start working on DWA Projects, Joe replied, "We are striving for a world class level of animation and we want to make sure we deliver" It is however expected that it would take around 12 to 18 months for the unit to be ready and working.

The Paprikaas core team with colleagues from Dreamworks & Technicolor

Its been more than 2 and a half years since the process of DWA looking at India began and finally things have formalized and now announced. It's a great achievement for Paprikaas and CEO Nandish Domlur who has played a visionary role shared, "Our Philosophy has always been quality and I must give credit to the team and all the boys led by Veerendra Patil (Creative Director) who have made this possible. The key thing that made the DreamWorks association happen has been the investment of Technicolor Thomson into Paprikaas, because otherwise it would be very difficult for a standalone company howsoever good at quality to achieve this."

"This augurs well for the entire Indian animation community with global brands making the kind of commitment. It is a major turning point for the Indian animation Industry" he added.

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