Paprikaas ties up with US varsity

To address skills shortage in animation industry

Paprikaas Animation Studios, a leading digital animation company, has decided to partner Carnegie Mellon University's Entertainment Technology Centre (ETC) to offer premium education and training programmes.

The training will cover the entire gamut of digital animation, game, visual effects and entertainment. The training arm of Paprikaas will be called Page Academy (Paprikaas Animation, Game and Entertainment Academy).

According to company officials, this is one model that animation companies can follow to combat the shortage of skills in the industry. The Page certificate courses are being designed, developed and delivered in collaboration with ETC.

"Faculty from the ETC along with their content (read course material) will train our employees and upgrade their skills in animation. This is the only way to ensure that the talent pool is created so that the industry can take off.

Today, the Indian animation industry is at a stage where the IT industry was about 10-12 years ago," Srini Raghavan, co-founder and president, Paprikaas Animation Studios told Business Standard.

According to Raghavan, the company will reap the benefit of this tie-up during the second quarter of next fiscal.

"All animation companies are moving from 2D to 3D animation. The idea is to penetrate the Hollywood market. By executing those projects in India, we will be able to provide immense cost advantage. In order to be able to ensure that we do not miss out on this opportunity, we need to have good talent pool," Raghavan explained.

Paprikaas also announced that it will execute "X and I", the company's first 3-D animated feature film scheduled for a worldwide release in 2005.

Of the company's 120-strong workforce in India, USA and Italy, nearly 100 are currently working on the project for the last six months.

Raghavan said this project would have cost nearly $15-20 million, were it to be executed elsewhere.

However, since most of the work will be done in India, the company expects to finish the job at 50-60 per cent of the estimated cost.

Besides the feature film, the company is also working on 8-9 TV animation series with each series comprising 13-26 episodes. Currently, Paprikaas serves 25 clients spread across 12 countries. Most of its clients are based out of Europe, Asia and Canada.