Why American Giants Are Flocking To India...

Many entertainment giants such as Walt Disney and IMAX are beginning to outsource an increasing amount of their animation production to Asian countries, particularly India, while other companies are outsourcing animation from India for commercials and computer games. A factor making India an outsourcing destination for animation films is its vast base of English speaking workforce. Animation, which requires understanding of the English language in order to lip-sync the animated media to the audio dialogue, benefits from this particular talent that the Indian workforce possesses. A number of animation companies in the country are also creating skilled manpower for the animation market through various training programs.

Overall though, the main reason why foreign entertainment firms are flocking to India is the cost advantage the country offers. As an example, US animators can cost about $125 an hour; in India, they cost $25 an hour. Toonz Animation offers animation at 25 per cent to 40 per cent lower rates than other Asian studios and much lower than those of American studios. The total cost for making a full-length animated film in America is estimated to be $100 million to $175 million. In India, it can be made for $15 million to $25 million.Studios in India are also able to provide a large supply of low-cost, high-quality software engineers, even going so far as to establish studios outfitted with state-of-the-art hardware and software to carry out production overseas.

The Walt Disney Company has outsourced a number of major animation projects to studios throughout India. Cable and satellite station Cartoon Network is buying animation films made in India while MTV has added India to its outsourcing center along with the Philippines and South Korea. Applied Gravity, a multimedia company in New Zealand, has outsourced almost 90% of it animation work to Satyam Computer Services business process outsourcing subsidiary, Nipuna Services. An animatronics dog for The Discovery Channel’s Animal Planet from popular episode called “K9 to11” and animatronics models for New Zealand theme parks were some of the best-known creations of Applied Gravity in India.

CGI within India

Roadside Romeo (Hindi) is a 2008 computer-animated film written and directed by Jugal Hansraj and produced by Aditya Chopra and Yash Chopra



The film utilizes computer animation done entirely in India by Tata Elxsi's Visual Computing Labs (VCL) unit. Prior to Romeo, the Pentamedia company was involved in the making of India's first CGI features, released in 2000: Sinbad: Beyond the Veil of Mists and Pandavas: The Five Warriors. Roadside Romeo has been nominated for Outstanding Animation in an Animated Motion Picture at the 2009

Sinbad: Beyond the vail of mist



This is a small clip of Sinbad, which is india's first official CGI release. Released only in 2000 they are much behind the rest of the world. For example toy story etc which is of course american animated was released much earlier in 1995.

Kireet Khurana

Kireet Khurana is an Indian Animator. In his career of 12 years, he has made over 300 Short films, documentary films, ad films and is currently directing India’s first live action-3D animation comb film “Toonpur Ka Superhero”. After graduating from Sheridan College, Canada with high-honours in animation film making, he started his organization 2nz Animation Co. which makes animated films- shorts, ads or documentaries in 3D/ 2D/CG etc. He won his first President's National Award in 1995 for the film “Mahagiri” a film about cruelty against animals. the film won two National awards for Best Animation Film Direction and Best Animation, respectively . It also won a Certificate of Merit at the Mumbai Int'l Film Festival in 1996.

This is a short clip of his work for CNBC



Looking at his work it's evident that their is a strong indian influence not only the music but the way the animation has been produced.

Indian Animations

The first animated film from India is considered to be Ek Anek Aur Ekta, a short traditionally animated short educational film released in 1974 from Doordarshan's Film Division. Doordarshan is a government run public television service in India. The film is presented as a fable meant to teach children the value of unity. After its success, more shorts were produced by Doordarshan. This was the first time that original animated films from India were broadcast on national television in the nation's official language, Hindi.

The first Indian animated television series is Ghayab Aaya, aired in 1986 and directed by Suddhasattwa Basu.

The first Indian 3D animated film was Roadside Romeo, which was a joint venture between Yash Raj Films and the Indian division of the Walt Disney Company. It was written and directed by Jugal Hansraj.

Simon's Cat

I first heard about Simon Tofield on bbc news, he was in an interview regarding the animation below, when i saw it i thought it was fantastic so i decided to research who Simon Tofield was. Simon Tofieldis an English animator who has a great interest in British wildlife, painting, the great outdoors and of course cats. He has three cats - Hugh, Maisie and Jess. Simon draws all of the Simon's Cat films himself. This can require up to 25 drawings per second of animation. He uses Adobe Flash to animate his cartoons. Simon draws on an A4-size Wacom Intuos 3 pen and tablet. Simon works alongside Shrooty who is a talented sound designer who works on the films with Simon. He makes all the character sounds in the films himself, including the meows! Now that's good Foley work...



After watching the animation i related it with some principles. I defineatly thought it showed squash and stretch when the cat pulls his owners ear. I also noticed that weight was used when the cat was walking along the bed, you could obviously see the weight of the cat inprinted on the bed sheets. Another principle is anticipation when the cat flings the basball bat back ready to crack his owner on the end, all and all a very good animation.

First Colour Animation By Walt Disney

Flowers and Trees is a 1932 Silly Symphonies cartoon produced by Walt Disney, directed by Burt Gillett, and released to theatres by United Artists on July 30, 1932. It was the first commercially released film to be produced in the full-color three-strip Technicolor process, after several years of two-color Technicolor films.

Flowers and Trees was already in production as a black and white cartoon before Walt Disney saw Herbert Kalmus' three-strip Technicolor tests. Deciding that Flowers and Trees would make a perfect test for the process, he had the black and white footage scrapped, and had the short redone in color. The color Flowers and Trees was a commercial and critical success, winning the first Academy Award for Best Short Subjects: Cartoons.

As a result of the success of Flowers and Trees, all future Silly Symphonies cartoons were produced in three-strip Technicolor, and the added novelty of color helped to boost the series' previously disappointing returns. Disney's other cartoon series, the Mickey Mouse shorts, were deemed successful enough not to need the extra boost of color, and therefore remained in black-and-white until 1935's The Band Concert.

Disney Animations

Mickey Mouse in Steamboat Willie (1928).Steamboat Willie was first released on November 18, 1928. It was co-directed by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks. Iwerks again served as the head animator, assisted by Johnny Cannon, Les Clark, Wilfred Jackson and Dick Lundy. This short was intended as a parody of Buster Keaton's Steamboat Bill Jr., first released on May 12 of the same year. Although it was the third Mickey cartoon produced, it was the first to find a distributor, and thus has been cited as Mickey's debut. Willie featured changes to Mickey's appearance (in particular, simplifying his eyes to large dots) that established his look for later cartoons.


The cartoon was not the first cartoon to feature a soundtrack connected to the action. Fleischer Studios, headed by brothers Dave and Max Fleischer, had already released a number of sound cartoons using the DeForest system in the mid-1920s. However, these cartoons did not keep the sound synchronized throughout the film. For Willie, Disney had the sound recorded with a click track that kept the musicians on the beat. This precise timing is apparent during the "Turkey in the Straw" sequence, when Mickey's actions exactly match the accompanying instruments. Animation historians have long debated who had served as the composer for the film's original music. This role has been variously attributed to Wilfred Jackson, Carl Stalling and Bert Lewis, but identification remains uncertain. Walt Disney himself was voice actor for both Mickey and Minnie.

This is stated on you tube as the first animation of Walt Disney but it's actually the third, the first two were 'Plane crazy' and 'The Gallopin Gaucho' but these two did not have sound added to them. This was his third animation which had added sound which is probably why it's the most well known of Walt Disney's animations of Mickey Mouse.

For my Critical Perspective Essay i am looking into the practices and issues around the work of Walt Disney and amongst my research i found several animations which i just thought were superb and use the principles of animation we have been looking at in our Applied Design lessons.