If your jaw dropped on seeing the latest James Bond film Skyfall, the credit doesn't go just to Q, but also to visual effects (VFX) artists from India who ensured that the film's many spectacles had audiences in thrall. Yes, today, many Indian VFX and animation studios are working on Hollywood films turning pixels into phenomenon.

Visual effects designer V Srinivas Mohan, the man behind the technical wizardry in Endhiranand Maattrraan, feels that while many
VFX companies and even the government might be considering our VFX business as flourishing based on the foreign jobs, it doesn't indicate the real growth of the industry. "Out of the 400-odd VFX and animation companies in our country, only a dozen of them are really doing creative work. The others are merely doing labour-intensive tasks like wire removal, rotoscope, keying and match moving. These tasks can be done by training anyone for that specific purpose," he says.

VFX and animation industry experts feel that the industry has been in bad shape for the last seven to eight years after the Hollywood studios hitched upon the idea of cutting down costs incurred in visual effects by opting to outsource jobs. These studios merely see India as a destination for cheap labour. According to the FICCI-KMPG Report 2012, "the cost of animation production in India is one fourth of that in North America and about 35 per cent lower than countries such as Korea and Philippines." click here

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