Media services outsourcing in high demand!

Wednesday, 16 July 2008

India's media services outsourcing industry continues to thrive as large media conglomerates like Viacom, Walt Disney and Cartoon Network are increasingly sourcing animation from India. Recently, Quatrro BPO acquired UK-based Babel Media, outsourced services provider to gaming and entertainment industry. Early this year, Compact Disc India bagged a $15.7 m contract to provide animation outsourcing services to iMedia Ventures for a movie that is slated to be released in December 2009.

The offshore media services provider market in India is estimated to be over $375 m in 2006. Media services broadly include services provided for entertainment, marketing communication and non-entertainment (pre-media). Animation is the largest segment within media services, followed by gaming. Pre-media services make up for less than 5% of the total Indian offshoring revenues in the media services segment.

Buyers of media services (% share in total work offshored)

Source: ValueNotes Research

Among various entertainment segments, the television segment is currently outsourcing the maximum proportion of work (about 45%). Even in the television segment, TV serials are the most aggressive outsourcers, while home videos are fast catching up. Films and gaming are the second and third largest business outsourcers. Outsourcing of production processes in animated films is most cost-effectively done from India, while visual effects is a service that is gaining popularity, especially among B and C grade overseas films.

Services outsourced

The Indian media services industry primarily provides support services in 2D post-production such as cleaning-up, in-betweening and scanning. Most of these services require minimal application of domain knowledge or specific skill-sets. However, over the years, the industry has graduated to providing higher-end, skill-based services, especially in 3D animation. The table below lists services offshored to India:

Segments	Services
2-D services	Creative Development (rarely offshored), Shot layout/Storyboarding (rarely offshored), Animatics, Clean-up / inbetweening, Character design, Set/BG Design, Modeling, Rigging, Lighting, Texturing, Shading, Character Animation, Particle Effects, Crowd Animation, Matte Painting, MEL Scripting, Compositing, Rendering
3-D services	Character Modeling, Sets/ Props Modeling, Match Moving, Rigging, Key Frame Animation, Motion Capture Animation, Texturing, Lighting, Compositing, 3D SFX
Visual effects & Digital intermediary	Wire & Rig removal, Green Matte removal, Digital clean-up, Pre-viz, Digital Film Restoration, Rotoscopy, Titles, Matte Painting & Background, Morphing, Transition Effects, Color Correction / Touch-Ups, Particle Effects, CGI, Compositing, Atmospherics, Digital Opticals, Natural Phenomena, Compositing Multi-layered & Blue-Green shots, On-Set VFX Supervision, Camera Match Moves (CMM)
Gaming	Game asset creation, Character Modeling, Set Design & Modeling, Game Cinematics, Matte Painting, Queing, Games Testing, Gamers help desk, Audio, Texturing
Pre-media and Content services	Creative Services, Photography, Color Services, Desktop Publishing, Ad Management, Digital Work Flow Solutions, Art Management, Conversion and Repro Services, Design Studio Services, Typesetting/Composition Publishing Services

Source: ValueNotes Research

Going Forward…

Over the last few years these studios have developed capabilities to start co-production and have also been creating content, although mostly for the domestic market. The shift from 2D to 3D services has been distinct, and has facilitated better penetration into the global market. There have also been some acquisitions of overseas studios mainly with the intent of furthering marketing capabilities and skill sets.

On the other hand, gaming is expected to show the highest rate of growth for outsourcing amongst media services. A large number of companies are being set up and players are bagging deals for game development mostly from US and Japan. We expect a lot more action in the media outsourcing over the next couple of years.

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