Animated adventures

When ingenious minds come together it is a boom of creativity. That underlines the co-founders of Whitelephant Productions, Arun Ghosh and Haritha Nori. Whitelephant Productions is a digital media production house and animation studio which specialises in 2D animation content for the internet, television and mobile domains. They also write and produce animation ads for television, commercial shows, feature films and videos for corporate clients. Their clientele are based across India as well as overseas.

Both Arun and Haritha have a background in media studies with over four years of experience in the field. They have an office in Banjara Hills with over 35 artists who call themselves a creation-centric lot. In conversation with Hyderabad Hans, the creative duo offer more insights into their job

On being an entrepreneur

Being an entrepreneur is definitely a boon for us since we have been longing to be in this field right from college days and we have reached a point in life where we understand the business of entertainment thoroughly. We feel fortunate to be working in an atmosphere that has a proper combination of business and arts. We consider Whitelephant Productions to be our film and media school as well as an MBA institution. This is the place where we learnt the subtle differences between business and arts and have come to understand the working structure in the combination of two fields as diverse as arts/entertainment and business.

On animation market in Hyderabad

The market in animation, we must agree, is not as sunny as it was earlier, but as they say, it all depends on your perspective. Sometimes due to lack of opportunities, you tend to open up a new wing and create content that suits the current market scenario and that is why we have targetted the corporate sector. We have come to understand that the market for animation in the corporate sector is so huge that even if we work to the fullest of our potential, there is still a lot left for us to tap. People somehow have the notion that animation is all about kids and cartoons on television. Yes, it is definitely a major chunk but entirely not limited to that. The application of animation across various other institutions is really huge. One can find opportunities depending on how they look at the market and life, in general.

Animation five years from now

The scope of the market in the next five years, as we see it, will be really huge because the need for creating new content doesn’t generally die. When it comes to producing extremely creative and new content, what field would you think serves better than the animation industry? That is the true beauty of this field. That is what keeps us motivated. And like we earlier said, the need for application of animation is increasing like never before in the corporate sector, be it for explaining their goods/products/services, which gives us an altogether new scope of service. Moreover, if we have to explain a product or service, we would basically have to understand the advantages of those products and clients. So we also do a bit of market research which sums up the reason why we are here in the first place.

On the creative process

When we are talking about the difference in content, we must say that the process of creating content generally remains the same but the atmosphere in our organisation is such that- every person is given creative space/freedom. Most of the time when an animator engages himself in a task to create new content, he wouldn’t have the need to restrict himself to the general structure of work in the organisation or the general norm in the industry. We generally ask our artistes to liberate themselves creatively so that they reach a maximum possible point of satisfaction. That is why we remain extremely excited throughout any new project. We believe that giving creative spaces to artistes is very important and that probably one of the major reasons why we are what we are.

Inspiration?

Though there are several people that inspire us every day of our lives, right from family, friends and great people who have ever walked this planet. We personally think we have now come to a point in life and philosophically speaking, we find bliss and inspiration in almost each and every thing in life, in general, big or small. The moment we open our eyes every morning, we feel blessed and simply put it is so inspiring for us to just live and create something new everyday.

What keeps you and Whitelephant going every day?

What keeps Whitelephant Productions going is probably a tough question to answer but honestly, we feel the urge to create new content everyday. The moment we enter office we feel so excited to do something new and something different. There are hardly days when we do not feel content. Every day throws new challenges. The excitement before starting and satisfaction after completion of projects is what keeps us rolling.

Define yourself to a proverb

Whether you think you can or you can’t, you are always—RIGHT.”