Skilling a challenge in animation, gaming; more training programs will fill the gap: Experts

The Australian government has designed the 2023-24 Permanent Migration Programme. The reforms focus on targeted skilled migration and higher standards for international students, among others.

The animation, visual effects, gaming and comics (AVGC) sector is expected to contribute 20 lakh jobs in the next decade, however, the challenge to fill those vacancies will be skilling the talent pool.

Long-term training, costly courses and lack of trainers are some of the aspects that the AVGC sector is working on provide more skilled talent to meet the demand.

"AVGC domain is changing so fast and the digitisation of various aspects is posing a real challenge. Also, emerging technology have institutes in the country and states, which are offering long term training. It is estimated that AVGC will grow 14-16 percent in the next decade and contribute 2 million jobs. Whether we will be able to skill that many people will be a challenge. So, we will have to plan a lot of short-term courses. For other sectors, there are short-term skilling courses of 3-4 months. But AVGC courses range from 1 year to 18 months," said EV Ramanna Reddy, Chairman, Karnataka Skill Advisory Committee on Emerging Technologies, GoK during a panel at the GAFX event held in Bengaluru on January 29.

He said that they have constituted a working group for AVGC skilling. "While a lot is being done, the demand is high," he said, adding that getting trainers is also a challenge and courses are costlier.

In terms of short-term program, the industry needs some resources that can be quickly churned out in 2-3 months, said Mohit Soni, CEO of Media & Entertainment Skills Council (MESC).

"There are 28 job roles which are National Skills Qualification Framework (NSQF) aligned under MESC and of that there are 17 job roles between levels 3 and 5, which means the notional hours for these programs is between 390-840 hours. We should be able to complete these programs in three months," he said.

NSQF is a competency-based framework that organizes qualifications into levels of knowledge, skills, aptitude and responsibility. Among the various levels, the third level is for technical, skilled and supervisory occupations while level 5 involves chartered, professional and senior management occupations.

Training programs

Soni added that after the AVGC draft policy, there has been tremendous flow of communication, work and initiatives that have started. "Some of the key initiatives is the schooling system that have started adopting most of our programs. Today, there are three programs that we are running in the schools and there are 17 more in the pipeline. Over the next 2-3 months, there will be 17 new training modules integrated in the schooling system. We are also launching a diploma program with AICTE (All India Council for Technical Education). There are also 12 degree program, which most of the colleges and universities are adopting."

At the AICTE level, things are evolving for the AVGC sector. There is a committee, which is working on building a curriculum for AVGC in engineering colleges and polytechnic as well.

The machinery on the ground is ready, Soni said. "We will make more efforts to bring in more training professionals," he added.

In 2023, 43,000 teachers were trained by MESC, said Ashish Kulkarni, who is part of the governing board of MESC. This year the target is to train 75,000 teachers.

"It is important to do these numbers otherwise we will not be able to build the ecosystem. When the information technology (IT) revolution happened, Indian Institute of Technology (IITs) were already present," he said.

Career in AVGC 

Kulkarni said that there is still resistance in many families when children show interest in building a career in media and entertainment. In such cases, it is important to have tests to identify the aptitude.

"There is media and entertainment creative aptitude test (MECAT) and we have also come up with MECAT junior. In the last six months, 50,000 children have taken this test."

While the many efforts have moved the needle on the education side, experts point out that the sector is looking for industry support.

"There is a base of institutes and talent but we have to work in bringing industry for the AVGC sector," said Sanjeev Kumar Gupta, CEO, Karnataka Digital Economy Mission (KDEM).

He added that a lot of talent in the AVGC space is coming from tier II, III cities.

On the industry front, TCS iON, a strategic unit of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) tied up with and global kids and family entertainment major Toonz Media Group to offer courses in graphic designing and motion graphics programmes.

"We have created a career counselling platform, which offers 500 job roles. We will be happy to offer it to MESC and KDEM. We aggregate jobs on a platform where corporates can post their jobs. We are requesting more corporates to post job roles. I hope more AVGC firms come forward and post jobs on the platform so that it becomes a single window to look for opportunities within the corporate world," said Harsh Nagpal, Head of Skills Enablers, TCS iON.

With the many initiatives for the AVGC sector in terms of skilling and employment, experts estimate a level playing field for the creative and performing arts in the country.