Hybrid

Not another combined feature with live-action and animation, but a studio partnership ...

India's Crest Animation Studios has “entered into an understanding to form a joint venture” with U.S.-based animation and FX studio Reel FX to coproduce 10 films over eight years. ... [T]he objective of the JV is to finance and produce a slate of ten CGI animated/hybrid feature films over a period of seven or eight years. The films will be developed by top talent in Hollywood under the supervision of Cary Granat, ex CEO of Walden Media.

Yeah, the piece above is a few weeks old, but it triggers a thought ...

The first joint animated project in which Crest was involved was last year's Alpha and Omega, with Lionsgate. Like the new slate of features, AO was aimed at the global marketplace. Unfortunately ...

Worldwide gross: Alpha and Omega -- $50,507,267

You can't produce a picture for twenty or thirty or forty million dollars, toss in an equal amount for prints and advertising, and come out smelling like a rare and precious flower with a $50 million gross. Your fragrance will be closer to a homeless ex-studio executive who's been lying in the gutter too long.

As a grizzled animation veteran who's worked at studios on both coasts and overseas expressed to me:

"It's not enough to have the right hardware and software. And it won't work if you have hard-working beginners that can move characters around but not really animate. Plus you can't just have people who throw drawings up on a cork-board or onto a Cintiq and have a feature that works. You have to own staff with some real production experience, know-how and talent ..."

Which is often easier to advocate and propose than actually do. I've had more than a few people who claim to know tell me that India has a sub-contracting culture with a lot of creative and quality problems, and that China -- building animation "centers" like mad -- is ten to twenty years behind India.

As I've noted previously, there are lots of talented Indians and plenty of top-flight Chinese artists and technicians. But based on current evidence, their home countries aren't nurturing the high flyers required to make the Chinese and Indian animation industries take off. What's required is a mind-set that aspires to quality and innovation. I don't think they're close to that yet.

And partner Reel FX, which has had a development studio in Santa Monica these last few years, will shortly be closing the shop down and moving the whole enterprise back to Dallas, Texas. (Not a real swift move, in my opinion, because they're removing themselves from a dynamic talent pool. But I'm sure they have their reasons.)

In the fullness of time, we'll see how the Crest-Reel FX marriage plays out.