Some people are born to be different. Sondarya Rajinikanth, the younger of the two daughters of Tamil Super Star, Rajinikant, is one such. Instead of treading the beaten path of celluloid history, where stars children are pampered with the best that money can buy and soon settle down happily in life, Sondarya seems to have decided to do an Ekta Kapoor in the South. Here too, instead of getting into live action film and television content production, Sondarya has chosen to tap the emerging opportunities of the global animation industry. With a heart that dreams big and a course in Australia, Sondarya set up Ocher Studios just under three years ago. Ocher has already made its presence felt in the industry, what with its association with Adlabs and the announcement of their first animation film Sultan ? The Warrior. As the managing director and chief executive of Ocher Studios, Sondarya today manages a 85-member team, which is set to touch 250 by June, 2008 as recruitment is currently on for the animation division. Sondarya has been making her mark, be it while addressing the audience at CII's Connect 2007 or inaugurating ET's CEO Golf Tournament in Chennai recently or speaking at Mipcom, Cannes. ET's D Govardan caught up with the pretty 21-year-old
What made you to take up animation as profession and what drove you to set up Ocher Studios?
I have, since childhood, aspired to be in the creative line of work. Post-production and being behind the camera has always fascinated me. I started Ocher with a vision to set a standard of my own in this industry. With the grace of god, what many companies would take many years to get to, Ocher has in a short span of 2 years and 7 months to be exact. After having run the VFX division I ventured into animation last year.
What are your animation plans?
I am venturing into animating in a large way with Sultan and a few other animation full length film projects. I believe in content and my focus is to create IP for my company. Yes, outsourced work is always good to generate revenue into the company and to associate with international banners, but my priority points are in the order ? content creation, technical and programming training for artists and then outsourced work. I am already putting my order into action and working towards being not only a service providing company but a solution providing one.
Sultan - The Warrior is already being considered as the biggest, in terms of cost, animation film made from India. Can you elaborate ?
It is indeed a big film. It is the first in many ways. It's the first time a live action actor is getting animated in a full length feature film. It's the first animation feature for A R Rahman. We are targeting on reaching 90% realism with the 3D characters and the look and feel of the film. In terms of cost, I would say the budget of the film is close to that of a big budget live action flick.
I will be using few star voices for the characters in the movie apart from my father who is lending his voice for his part. The film has four full length songs which will be choreographed by prominent choreographers, typical Indian style. We are having an English title track which will feature a main stream English music star. It is a mythological fictitious flick. It is not a story already told nor is it an excerpt from an epic. It's my father's story.
We are planning 12-14 mainstream world languages, including English. It is an hour and 30 mins film, which I'm working very hard on completing on a record time of less than 2 years! Animation features take close to 4 -5 years production time for completion.
Exim Bank is associating itself with Ocher Studios through Sultan?
Yes, we are associated with Eximto begin with, and surely will look into a long time plan once we complete this.
What was the response to Sultan at Cannes?
Fabulous! It was such a great feeling for me to be amongst such achievers and stalwarts from all around the globe together under one roof. Believe me, "Indian content is on the move" and that was something Sultan made everyone there feel for certain. I really believe there is more to Indian animation than just recreating the epics, I love the epics personally, but our audience wants to see more. There is a whole sector of audience world wide that are getting bigger for this medium and genre.
As the head of an emerging animation and special effects company, how do you see the market potential for Indian companies in this sector. Where do you see Indian animation industry heading to in the coming years?
The future looks bright. I personally cannot wait to see the animation industry in 5 years. Awareness of this medium is better than what it was 2 years ago. We are as old as the IT industry. But in India we are still evolving and haven't yet reached world standards. What we lack in India is trained quality manpower.
Believe me, India is not just about creativity when it comes to execution work or even creating our own content. We have tremendous programming skills and we still haven't put these artists to use. For example, in Hollywood, most 3D and VFX films create their own customized plug-in for the technical issues they face to execute their film. We should get there, we should become self sufficient. Again, not only are we good at outsourced work, but we are most capable of creating our own content, that should be the focus! Ocher and I will re-define 3D. After Sultan, it will be something bigger and better!
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