From correspondents in Maharashtra, India, 09:50 PM IST

Maya Entertainment Ltd (MEL) today launched MAAC Creative Shop, as part of its education division Maya Academy of Advanced Cinematics (MAAC). MAAC Creative Shop will be spearheaded by Sanjiv Waerkar, the newly appointed “Chief Creative Officer” at MAAC.

MAAC Creative Shop-a first ever initiative in the animation industry, offers a platform to young creative talent to create original concepts and market them to producers for licensing/co-development. Under MAAC Creative Shop, students of MAAC can create content ideas for all platforms including TV, home video, films, mobile, gaming and other new media streams. A committee headed by Sanjiv Waerkar will shortlist concepts based on a host of parameters and develop them for the market.

Short-listed concepts will be presented in “pre-launch kits” (comprising of the script, key character designs and a three to five minute promo fully animated and developed) and marketed to producers by MAAC.

Announcing the initiative, Ronald D’Mello, Managing Director, MEL said, “It is our privilege to rope in Sanjiv into MAAC. Talent creation in the animation industry in India suffers from lack of creative orientation. MAAC has been pioneering various initiatives to make the students more creatively oriented. MAAC Creative Shop is a new innovative initiative that will, for the first time in India, trigger a pool of original content ideas indigenously developed in India and commercially exploited in association with industry.”

“We expect to generate five original concepts under MAAC Creative Shop initially and to present the pre-launch kits for these concepts to producers in the first 12 months of the initiative. We see enormous scope in the film & entertainment sector, including gaming, to absorb the new concepts created under MAAC Creative Shop”, Sanjiv Waerkar, Chief Creative Officer, MAAC, added.

Over the last one year there is growing realization amongst Indian studios to develop and own IP’s of content versus just doing service outsourcing business for overseas clients. Coupled with the fact that India is expected to be one of the dominant consumers of new media, animation and gaming content in future years given its demographic skew towards younger age population, will lead to vast content development opportunities arising out of India for Indian and overseas markets

According to FICCI estimates, the animation industry is expected to grow to Rs 4,300 crore by year 2009. Although the overall media and entertainment sector-the mainstay of the animation industry, is growing rapidly, the gaming industry is expected to grow exponentially to Rs 1,350 crore by the year 2009.

Sanjiv Waerkar, “Chief Creative Officer”, MAAC

Sanjiv will be heading the Academic development team at MAAC and also spearheading “MAAC Creative Shop”.

With over 17 years in the animation industry, Sanjiv can easily be called as a pioneer and a driving force in the animation industry. RMB, where Sanjiv was a partner, was rated the best in the industry and was the only animation studio to have won three consecutive IFFA awards, including the 2002 Excellence in Animation Award for “Meena in the city”. Subsequently, the years with UTV saw him directing several international award winning TV series. “Tree Monsters”, “Dr. Disaster”, 3D home DVD series, with popular titles like Robinhood, King Kong, Christmas Carol and Three Musketeers, a fully developed award winning show from pre-production to final delivery for the Middle East called “Freej” for Lamtara productions, a TV show for NBC / Entertainment Rights, Mike Young Productions DVD feature “Bratz Super Babyz”, “The ring of fire”-a 2D TV series for Disney to name a few.

Source: Press Release Distribution via India PRwire