Though it still is early days as regards original Indian animated content, things are gradually reaching a stage where at least the number of Indian studios involved in creating original content are growing beyond a number that can be counted on one’s fingers.
One sweeping glance across the country and you find small (in terms of head count) sized studios filled with creative dreams and artistic zeal working away silently, quietly investing their time, money, resources and sweat into the creatively satisfying and financially promising goal of creating original shows based on original, fresh stories and with varying artistic treatment.
Bangalore based pre production and concept development studio, SGS creations has in the past five years quietly and silently been developing not one, not two but seven original shows!
Speaking to Animation ‘xpress, SGS Creations head Sandeep Gangatkar shared,”SGS has been pursuing the vision of a global entertainment powerhouse with Indian origins to fruition. Domestic Indian market will be our first focus, however we plan to move quickly into new territories and new entertainment forms”
“SGS is also working on the pre production and story development for seven shows, four of which are completely ready. We are looking at pitching the shows to Broadcasters, Producers and Investors both in India and Abroad to license our shows for production. Our involvement in those productions will for now be limited to development and Pre-Production as we cannot produce all the content on our own. We will encourage our partners to explore other production houses to fulfill the production requirements if they do not have a production house of their own” he added.
“Besides we are also working on the pre production and story development of a show which has been assigned to us by a Broadcaster, however we cannot elaborate about it at this point of time” he further added.
The shows being created at SGS include Sepoy Matinee, Piro-Mania, Whacky Rookies, Tiny Thoughts, Freddy The Turtle, Run for Heaven and Once you go to School.
On being asked as to what has been the revenue model so far for sustaining the studio and making the considerable investments that go into creation of IP, Gangatkar replied,”All these days we dedicated to development activities & to create a line-up of compelling shows. To support our development activities we had to take up some small chunks of service works. These were the regular bread & butter works like 3D Walk through’s, Logo’s, Web site’s etc. It’s really difficult to pursue both Creative vision and commercial success being a studio based within a garage but that’s how some of the world’s biggest animation, gaming and Internet brands were developed too”
Dedicated to cultivating original content with the strength of story telling and a focus on Creative writing, Character development, Conceptual Artworks, Story boarding & other Pre-Production activities, SGS Creations was formed in Dec 2000 as a one-man studio and has grown to a core team of around 10 Artists.
“Currently I’m involved in setting up a Production house that would be producing some of our contents. Very soon we will be announcing its operations along with the screening of the show reel” concluded Sandeep.