Arcopol Chaudhuri

Mumbai: India’s animation and gaming sector could well be facing the heat of talent crunch, unless consistent industry-led initiatives got more aggressive.

Speakers at a session here at industry event ‘FICCI Frames’ argued that perceptions towards careers in the media and animation sector were for long, not considered “real jobs”.

Moreover, industry professionals often did not find enough time to engage with academia to groom talent with real industry insights because “they are too busy creating media products”.

Lachlan MacKinnon, professor of Information and Knowledge, University of Abertay Dundae, Scotland, said India already has a reputation for technically sound graduates and hence and the next logical step would be to expect creative work out of them.

“What we need is a continuous industry dialogue through engaged master classes, grading student work, establishing contact and real insights from people in the industry.”

K Pandyan, director, Graphiti Multimedia, said perceptions from parents and guardians about the careers in the media and animation sector needed to change.

“In the animation business, it has been the handover of knowledge from people who know, to the people who want to know. This will have to change. Parents send their kids to swimming and music classes and then animation classes. It’s almost become something for kids who are not working.”

Graphiti, founded by Ram Mohan, is currently engaged in various student initiatives starting with the Graphiti School of Animation.

An interesting observation made was the presence of “misguided talent” within the industry. P Rajsekhar, vice-president, HR and operations, Crest Animation Studios, said there was no shortage of talent.

“Every year training institutes, mentors are trying to create 25,000-odd trained professionals who believe they are talented. They are trying to pass of skilled people as talented people. What we need is people who can enable the talent to grow and blossom, instead of getting carried away by the word called ‘training’.”

The cautionary bells rung when Mac-Ninnon said, “This (animation) is an industry which burns up talent fast. You don’t want to throw away people too soon.”

Despite having a media industry growing at a CAGR of 18%, India still feels the pinch and lack of trained and skilled human resources and talent.

Source : DNA