For all those who follow Indian Animation outsourcing religiously, here’s an interesting story on a related topic, Illustration services.
New Delhi based publishing solutions company Book Matrix has made a successful business out of providing International Publishers with its creative and illustration services. The company which boasts of a team of 120 creative professionals of which 70 are illustrators has completed work on close to 400 books in its two years of existence.
Says Book Matrix Director Sandeep Kaushik, “When we started a couple of years ago, nobody believed that India could provide these kinds of services. Initially the comments we got were that IT is where India’s strengths lie, but with creative services we will not be able to match up to the quality standards and sensibilities of the International markets. But over time we have made our place not only in illustration, but also in layout design and other creative elements of publishing. Today our Indian Illustrators are treated at par with European or American Illustrators”
Volumes follow when Quality arrives. Now that Book Matrix has set a standard of quality in its work, the volumes of works that are coming in is enormous. The company is currently working on working on graphic novels (a series of 24 books in two different styles, 12 each), a set of 36 story books in the series “Stories from Around the World”, an encyclopedia for Kids (for 8-12 year olds), eight books on the solar system and a lot more projects.
Just like in the animation services business, with volume of work increasing good artists are becoming scarce to find. Sharing an interesting observation on this topic, Kaushik points out, “When we started out, a single ad got us 145 artists applying. Today we give ads everywhere, in the leading news papers etc and we get very few responses. The industry is growing at an alarming pace and we need more BFAs and MFAs”
The market size for outsourced Illustration and creative services in the publishing space is huge. There are close to 10,000 kids books publishers in the world. “It’s a large pie” shares Kaushik. “There are more players getting into this space in the country but the problem is with manpower. We need to have a revision of the curriculums that are currently being taught in a majority of the country’s art schools”
“We have a team of illustrators who have unique and diverse styles and also the capability to adopt any given style specified by our clients. Our illustration styles range from cartoon, semi-realistic, realistic and other varied styles.”
Other than working for overseas clients, Book Matrix has also worked for big Indian publishers, some of which will be showcased at the forthcoming Delhi Book Fair.
Sandeep further added, “It is a great learning experience for us at Book Matrix to work for some of the biggest publishing houses across the world and that too in various art styles. This also gives us a chance to interact with some of the best art directors in the International Market.”
“We need to work hard and build up a strong team to carve a niche in the international arena. We have done our best in the past but need to work even harder to make Indian creative professionals known in the global publishing world” he concluded.