Animation uninterrupted: Slow, but steady work goes on amid lockdown

Despite genuine hiccups in dubbing and final delivery, animation is one sector that’s able to bring out fresh entertainment even during lockdown, say industry experts.

At a time when the Covid-19 pandemic has brought the live action film and TV industry to a standstill, it’s the Chhota Bheems, Little Singhams and Motu Patlus of the home-grown Indian animation world that are alive and kicking. They continue to entertain the audience with new episodes, launches and ‘edutaining’ content across platforms.

Amid lockdown, it’s the animation that is alive and kicking churning out fresh episodes.

While no shootings are taking place, and TV channels are banking on re-runs as a bait for audiences, animation is one sector that is able to bring out fresh entertainment with either its bank of content, through industry experts admit that there are some genuine hiccups in dubbing and final delivery.

Slowly but steadily, all aspects of production are running remotely from home, says Anish Mehta, CEO of animation studio Cosmos-Maya, adding that “new episodes of our shows are being produced on a daily basis.” Among their new show launches include Guddu, Bapu and Gadget Guru Ganesha on Disney India and OTT platform Zee5, apart from Motu Patlu and Selfie With Bajrangi, as well as their own IPs Lambuji Tinguji and Titoo.

Children, for whom summer vacation has come a tad early due to the coronavirus crisis, are lapping up content, indicates latest BARC data which reflects a 39% growth in viewership for kids’ channels vis-a-vis the pre-Covid-19 era.

Anu Sikka, Head - Creative, Content and Research, Kids Entertainment Cluster, Viacom18, says they were already prepared to roll out new content in April in time for the post-exam period, but then “pulled up the schedule a bit” to March instead. Cartoon Network and POGO too premiered new content like Chhota Bheem Kungfu Dhamaka series and launched Bandbudh aur Budbak starting April itself instead of May.

Besides, Sikka adds, “Animation has a huge shelf life and repeat value, even in normal circumstances.”

Uttam Pal Singh, Head of Discovery Kids, says the pace of work is down to 70%, but the team behind Little Singham has been able to produce 20 episodes of the show amid the lockdown. They’ve also been able to deliver episodes of their other Bollywood-inspired home-grown property Fukrey Boyzzz.

Singh says the only bottleneck is n dubbing as voice artistes are unable to go to studios. So, one way they’ve worked around it is to cut down the language feed from 5 to just one in Hindi. However, he feels this phase is a good opportunity for the animation industry to explore new ways to work around the online business.

This is validated by Rajiv Chilaka, CEO and Founder, Green Gold Animation, who says initially when the lockdown was announced, there was panic. But feasible work from home solutions have ensured work continues despite teething technical problems owing to connectivity. So, even though final deliveries may not be happening for certain projects to networks, he adds, “Those are things we can catch up on fast after the lockdown ends”.

Chilaka, however, feels that it’s the VFX industry that’s in a bigger spot.

Explaining the basic difference, Keitan Yadav, chief operating officer, Redchillies.vfx & Color, says that while animation is fully generated on a computer, VFX has an element of live-action in it. “And hence, many projects are stuck due to the lockdown, as there’s dependency on content, unlike animation which can be fully pushed into production from homes, from scratch,” Yadav says.