India Wants to Create Animation

...and not just be a supplier for American companies' projects.

Or so India says:

Bolstered by a soaring economy and bursting with creative confidence, India's media industry wants to seize control of its destiny by moving from a service provider and market for Western productions to a producer and exporter of media content...

This has been the evolution of many overseas producers over the years. Lots of them start as service providers for American producers -- ink and paint, cleanup animation, animation. But as world markets grow, that model is falling away. Now overseas animation studios work on domestic production, do sub-contracting work, and broker lower end sub-contracting to other studios.

Today, with the falling American dollar, labor that used to go out-of-country often stays here. There's even instances of work sub-contracted to a foreign country, then being sub-sub-contracted back to L.A. (Makes you wonder, why ship it out in the first place?)

Tapaas Chakravarti, head of animation giant DQ Entertainment, this year became the first Indian producer to win an Emmy when the Egyptian-themed cartoon "Tutenstein," a co-production with PorchLight Entertainment for Discovery Kids, won a Daytime award for outstanding special class animation series.

"We are not just a service provider anymore; now we are looking for (real) partnerships," he said, adding that India media companies can now bring in "hard cash" as well as production expertise, particularly in the area of animation...

...But...the real future of India programming could be mobile. With 200 million mobile phone users and a growth rate of 8 million-10 million users a month, India quickly is becoming a major market for all forms of mobile content...

Globalization. It's a messy, tangled-up thing.