Hollywood animation comes to Nepal

Until recently, some of them had never even used a computer. Now, they are working for the likes of Walt Disney and Columbia Pictures at Nepal's first special effects and animation studio.

The company, Incessant Rain, is the brainchild of Kiran Joshi, who returned to his native Nepal to set up his own business in 2008 after a 17-year career in animation with U.S. movie giant Disney.

Joshi whose film credits include “The Lion King” and “The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” admits he had his doubts about going into business in one of the world's least developed countries.

But he says he was persuaded by the talent of the young artists he met when he returned to visit relatives in Nepal.

“Every four or five years I would come back to Nepal on vacation, and I always kept an eye on how things were going, but I never thought the country was ready for an animation studio,” Joshi, 48, said in an interview with AFP.

“Then in 2007 I came here and met some artists. Everyone I met had one thing in common — they had great passion, but no guidance. They made me realize I had to do something.”

Incessant Rain is the first company in Nepal to specialize in visual effects for production companies overseas — already big business in neighboring India.

Some special effects for James Cameron's futuristic 3-D blockbuster “Avatar” were outsourced to India, whose animation and visual effects industry was estimated by industry body NASSCOM to be worth US$494 million in 2008.

NASSCOM forecasts the global animation market, worth 68 billion dollars in 2008, will grow to 100 billion dollars by 2012 as film and television companies use more computer-generated imagery and seek to trim costs by outsourcing work.

Joshi believes Nepal has strong potential to tap into this growing market.

But he admits it is not always easy to do business in a country still struggling to recover from a decade-long civil war and beset by political instability.

“I thought the hardest thing would be to get the work up to a quality good enough for Hollywood,” he says.

“In fact, that was relatively easy. The hard part was the logistics. We need to have our computers on 24 hours a day, because even at night they are processing images. So power cuts, diesel shortages — these are the things that distract you.”

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