Having a great idea or story isn’t enough. Convincing others of its potential is a bigger challenge. Addressing this issue were Green Gold Animation founder Rajiv Chilaka and Rudra Matsa Entertainment founder Rudra Matsa at the ABAI Fest and KAVGC Summit 2015.
Rajiv started off by saying that the success that Green Gold has earned today wasn’t achieved in a day. It took them seven years to come up with the Hyderabad based company’s most successful character Chhota Bheem. Its first character was Bongo, an alien followed by Vikram aur Betaal which was taken up by Cartoon Network, albeit at just one tenth of the production cost. “We didn’t mind being underpaid because our aim was to be noticed on TV,” said Rajiv; after this came the company’s first pre sale in Krishna.
Rudra says that a few years ago the trend was to show mythological stories but now that isn’t the case. Rajiv said that the current trend is slapstick comedy. So one needs to know what the broadcasters are looking for as well so as creators it is essential to get the story right. “Broadcasters will see how balanced your story is with both action and humour and how kids relate to it,” said Rudra.
Rajiv stated that animation wasn’t just random drawing but also understanding physics, geography and nature around you. If an independent creator doesn’t have the backing of an animation studio, he can directly sell it to a broadcaster but try and keep some amount of share in it.
In a later session, Rudra said that the comic industry in the country faced the biggest challenge in fighting off the enormous amount distributors charge. For this his suggestion was to publish a small quantity of books and put them for sale on e-commerce platforms which allows the creators to keep a bigger cut.
A clinic on outsourcing was taken by Xentrix Studios CEO and co-founder Jai Natarajan and Digitales Studios director of business development and strategy RK Chand wherein they addressed the concerns regarding the challenges and precautions that need to be taken while doing outsourced work. This mainly involved negotiating price if client asks several changes to be made, to split budget over months rather than at one go and to keep a small permanent team and have freelancers work when needed. The future according to Jai was going to be ‘on demand’ whether it be content or talent.