Recently at MIPCOM, Animation ‘xpress Anand Gurnani met up with Mike Young of Mike Young Productions. Young can be attributed with a lot of credit in the succesfull emergence of the second wave of Indian animation as he was one of the early producers to demonstrate faith in Indian studios inspite of the first wave of Indian animation’s debacles.
In the short meeting that ensued, Young amongst many things spoke about the need for proper animation education, proper HR and the importance of creating a creative work atmosphere.
Here’s an excerpt-
I am always impressed with the level of education in India but there seems to be a bit of a gap in terms of the kind of education and the kind of new jobs that people are doing. The degrees are very fancy and high but are very vaguely useful rather than being ‘on the nail’ degrees.
There ought to be specialist animation degrees in colleges, something like Bachelor of Arts (for animation).
Because there is no proper animation training, there are few good artists. This results in constant poaching, which means inflated salaries and overheads. Also, the lack of proper initial training means a good amount of time and resource are invested for in house studio training. All this means that the cost advantage which India traditionally enjoys is lowering.
Indian studios have to understand that to get great work out of artists, the artists need to have their creative space, fun and moments of relaxation. Indians are very creative and understanding but what is needed is much better discipline and better HR Management. India has been slow on that front. I repeat that the people are creative, but to express that creativity they need to be given a creative working environment.
Amongst the many shows that MYP has outsourced and co produced with Indian studios include, ‘ToddWorld’, ‘Jakers! The Adventures Of Piggley Winks’, ‘Dive, Olly, Dive’ and Pet Alien.
