Suspended animation

Robi RoncarelliChennai: Reversing the earlier trend, the year 2002 saw the global animation industry logging a negative dollar growth in value terms despite the growth in the number of minutes of animation production.

According to industry tracker and president, editor and publisher of Pixel magazine, Robi Roncarelli, there are now signs of the industry logging value growth as well. He has come out with his latest computer animation industry survey, The Roncarelli Report on Computer Animation Industry — 2003.

Based in Canada, Roncarelli says, globally the computer animation industry has seen considerable changes essentially due to advances in technology, the global economic climate and an increase in the relative amount of lower cost production centres outside the US.

"The net effect is that while computer animation production in terms of minutes is growing in an accelerated manner, the sliding production cost has resulted in the industry value sliding slightly down," he explains.

According to Roncarelli, in 2002 the global computer animation industry declined in dollar value by 0.51 per cent to $27.09 billion worth of commercial animation and visual effects - $13.8 million lower than in 2001.