The Growth of India's Visual Effects Industry
Animation is the technique of motion graphics. It's basically the process of applying illusions to drawings or sketches so that they move and act in rhythm. Like in cartoons.VFX, on the other hand, is the manipulation of live-action scenes with digital or computerized elements to create realistic imagery. It is the technique of portraying anything "unreal" in a real way that we see in movies, essentially.
CGI, or Computer Generated Imagery, is a part of VFX. This is the part of the visual effects which is created by generating computer-generated graphics or software.
All of these have graphics design at the core of their operation, a domain that only gained sizable traction in India since the '90s. Gradually, there was a shift from traditional 2D to 3D models and more engagement of Indian talent in content creation, especially when outsourcing of post-production services from Hollywood studios began to rise.
Indian VFX artists have earned a reputation for their stellar work on international projects. With reduced costs and access to improved skills, Indian markets have become a staple for studios overseas who wish to farm out their visual effects and creative assignments.
But with a greater push and demand for visual effects in homegrown productions and a growing call for domestic intellectual property (IP) rights inclusion of the artists, the Indian animation and VFX sector has also taken the lift. In a 2019 report, KPMG estimated that the Indian animation, VFX, and post-production industry is expected to more than double in the next five years.
Push and Demand For Growth
When Baahubali was released in 2015, it attracted a worldwide broadcast market and audience that grew to appreciate its top-notch content. More than 15 Indian companies worked on the visual effects in the movie. Although it wasn't a watershed moment for the industry, it led to the conviction that domestic firms were capable of churning out superior VFX content.
With the growing rise in OTT and digital platforms, Indian content is drawing more eyeballs and competing with content across the globe. This has given a boost to the demand for new projects and artistic talent.
Animation is incidentally one of the few industries allied with the feature film industry that has grown (almost 10% in 2020) during the pandemic despite the economic fallout. Red Chillies VFX, a popular firm based out of Mumbai, has more than 300 of its artists working remotely and contributing to recent projects like Class of '83, Gunjan Saxena, Radhe, etc.
Even though the transition into 3D VFX has become mainstream now, some 2D animation and SFX (special effects) studios, like Toonz Animation, have maintained a significant presence in the markets too. Born in 2005, the studio now has a presence in 11 countries and a network of 3,000 professionals.
Toonz has capitalized on the Indian audiences' love for cartoon characters like Chacha Chaudhary, Rat-A-Tat, Fruit Ninja, etc, and has acquired an annual production capacity of 10,000 minutes.
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