Bollywood’s influence strong on animation gaming
Bollywood News : Animation may be all about creativity and imagination but when it comes to inspiration, Bollywood certainly seems to be the key. Non-film animation categories like Best Console Game and Best Animation in PC Game at the 2nd Golden Cursor Animation Award held last week in Mumbai saw Hanuman-The Boy Warrior and Ghajini respectively walking away with the awards. While the game on Ghajini is based on the film itself, the makers of Hanuman-The Boy Warrior, Aurona Technologies, who created the game for Sony PSP 2, have maintained that the success of the film based on the mythological hero was not the motivating factor to create a game on teen Hanuman. When it came to Best Animation in Mobile Game, Shemaroo’s Ghatothkach – Eat On Before Dawn, again inspired from the film by the same title, emerged as the winner. While the jury did not take into consideration the popularity of these games but concentrated on their content in terms of animation, story-telling, design and layout, production quality and what they term as the ‘X-factor’, that these games take from their counterpart films when it comes to storytelling and popularity cannot be negated.
What’s more, the fact that the big screen enjoys mass appeal and hence quality content as compared to other mediums like games, advertisements and small screen was established by the fact that Roadside Romeo, a mainstream Hindi animation film bagged the Best Animation (Professional) award apart from the Best Animated Feature Film honour. Further, the film also won the Best Animated Title Sequence, Best Animation Lyrics and Best Animation Music titles. Ironically, the film failed to impress as the box-office. This contrast clearly hints that the best of the Indian animation industry, which currently stands at Rs. 250 million according to a recent FICCI report, has yet to strike a chord with Indian audiences.
So then, does the industry that currently prides itself on being the emerging hubs for executing outsourced projects, need to re-look at the quality of its local content? According to Anthony Christov, who was worked on Wall-E and Ratatouille and was the Guest of Honour at the awards ceremony, it is most important that every content finds its own identity. In response to the question posed to him about whether Indian animation needs to look beyond mythologies for inspiration in order to enjoy global appeal, he cited the example of Japanese animation that has created a niche for itself in the international market while retaining its distinctive style. “My daughter watches Anime for a stretch of four hours!” offered Christov, thus hinting at the global market potential for India provided it puts its marketing strategies in the right direction.
- screenindia.com
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