The animation industry in India has always been on the backfoot, not in terms of not producing good stories or not having enough talents to put out an amazing visual story through the drawings and colors, but majorly lacking in terms of production budget which drags down the production quality and limits the talents to put the necessary or minimal amount of effort to put in inside an animation films.
Plotline Premise of the story
WADE an animated short film which tells the story of a version of Kolkata city (India) in the distant future where the city has been severely affected by climate change and now the city is full of flooded waters.
The most affected city of this climate change, the Sundarban city, the land of Bengal Tigers in West Bengal has completely submerged under the water and the residing humans have become the refugees of this mishap, forced to leave the place and so do the Bengal Tigers.
The story took dark turns when a refugee family in the flooded streets of Park Street got confronted with a Tiger and the battle for survival starts for both of the species.
Behind the Lens of the Indian Animation Short: WADE
WADE’s literal meaning is to step into something which has more resistance than air.
This animated short film depicts the struggle of humans and the animals for their survival in adverse situations created due to the climate change on the planet. This animated short film is produced by a group of talented artists hailing from the City of Joy Kolkata, India, and an animation studio who is trying to be on the front-foot and produce some of the best visual stories through animation in India “Ghost Animation Studios”
This Indian animation short film got recognized in many international events and won awards in the events like “City of Annecy Award” in Annecy International Animation Festival (France), “Satoshi Kon Award for Best Animated Short” in Fantasia International Film Festival (Canada), “Artist Award” in Odense International Film Festival (Denmark), “Audience Award” in Brooklyn Film Festival (USA), “Best Art Direction” in Animayo Film Festival. (All the awards were won in 2020)
(For more details check here 👉https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wade_(film))
Ghost Animation Studios literally ran a crowdfunding campaign to complete this project film which was started back in 2016. It was a successful campaign and we can see the results ourselves.
The director and writer of the film Upamanyu Bhattacharyya & Kalp Sanghvi took the inspiration for the story of WADE from the books like The Great Derangement by Amitav Ghosh and The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells.
They carried out this project with the help of 30 artists in total and they didn’t disappointed at all. The thorough research on the locations and the movement analysis of the Tiger was spot on and the sound design just made it even immersive along with the quality of animation.
To know more details about the production software’s please visit the link 👉 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wade_(film))
Why is India very slow in producing animated movies like WADE ?
India is the most diverse country on this planet and so are their stories, be it mythology or some great battles fought in the past. India has built bollywood based on these diverse stories so clearly finding good stories is not the problem here.
Some of the greatest animation movies were mostly mythological movies only like Ramayan, Mahabharat, Hanuman, etc. which were still so great that all of you will enjoy watching it, it’s almost timeless. The animation techniques they used were the conventional hand drawn frames by frames and then compositing to create animation. The movie WADE also follows the same technique and similar kind of art style as used back in the late 90’s and early 2000’s.
What drives any entertainment industry?
The most influential and important factor that is affecting the Indian animation industry has to be the budget. But deep down we all can agree that budget also depends on one very important factor that is the audience size and the market value of animated movies in India.
One reason I can think of for the below average market value is the rise of Bollywood during the era of late 90’s to mid 2000’s. The people were crazy about Bollywood and hardly any viewership was garnered thus the money was hardly forwarded to this industry and it always remained in the back stage. The equation of Demand and supply got shortened so much that we hardly saw any animated originals in the country.
While countries like Japan got a major boost during that period only for their variety of animation stories, it became the Hollywood of the animation industry.
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Animation demand and supply in 2023 in India
Fast forward to 2023 there is a surge of animation fans in India but as the demand is increasing here there is hardly any studio that I can name which is able to produce the same quality of animation as the other leading animation industries like Japan and US.
The art style and animation techniques has been evolved immensely also with current trends with fusion of the old technique with new technique is very famous and handy for the animation studios. Latest anime series like Chainsaw Man is the best example of the amalgamation of new animation techniques like CGI and the old style of framing each frame is widely getting accepted across the animation industry.
Disney also kept evolving day by day with their modern art styles and animation techniques and currently houses some of the best Animation Movies out there.
Where is the Indian Animation Industry in 2023 ?
The answer is fairly simple, the Indian animation industry is still lagging behind for almost more than 2-3 decades compared to the leading countries and there is a lot to catch upon.
The bubble audience for Indian Studios
Though the audience size is ever been growing but the audience is highly in vibe with the Japanese animation art style and the production quality which is hard to match for Indian animation studios currently. So these audience are just a bubble if we see because the moment they are introduced to something they will not like or say is old enough to not create interest and curiosity inside them, then the bubble will burst and again the money will be lost in the market and this same concept is known to the big players thus they are just holding up for the right time come in and put their money.
What is next for Ghost Animation Studio?
Honestly, there is hardly any information about the studio apart from their project WADE and the only website of ghost animation is also not working with which I can find something about their progress. Even after producing such a great visual story, there is one factor which is holding the Indian animation industry is the production budget. The budget is low and thus the standards is according to that, the standard is not attracting the newly built animation fans and thus this never ending loop is hunting every animation studio in India.
Conclusion
WADE is a beautifully crafted animation short movie but the technique is quite old & conventional and we have to accept the harsh truth that many of the Indian animation audience won’t like to watch the same in long runs. Only solution to this issue according to me is that until a good long term investment is not done to produce at least 70% similar production quality compared to the Japanese animation, the audience will not like it and India will never be able to tap into their own growing market
I hope studios like Ghost Animation studios will get justice and India will produce some of the greatest animation stories in the coming days.
Until that day peace and happy weebbing.
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