Lost in Translation – Web Comics from India

Digital Comics
Lost in Translation – Web Comics from India
By Hervé St-Louis
Jul 15, 2009 - 0:07

Being the owner of an animation studio listed in several industry directories, I’m quite used to receiving proposals from Indian animation studios referring to me as respected Sir and assuring me that they are capable of handling any animation work I may have, would I just send some work their way. It’s annoying and has been considered spam for the last five years. Many of the service providers offer sub level work and think that having built a school or two in some city with an unpronounceable name is sufficient. To be sure, there is great artistic talent in India; it will take another generation for the animation work of that country to be the same level of other places, like Vietnam or Korea.

But now, the proposals have spilt over into the comic book industry – specifically the Web comics grouping. This morning, I received an email from some nondescript studio from India titled “web comics portal from India”

“Hi,

We have a web comics portal from India www.insertindianstudiohere.com, currently comics are available in English and 3 other Indian languages.

These comics are based on Indian Moral stories. Find time to review the www.insertindianstudiohere.com and provide us listing in webcomics section of comibookbin.com

with warm regards”

Now, I’m not sure what they are trying to sell and it’s obvious that they are clueless about business etiquette in North America. I don’t like to be given orders from people in emails especially when it’s one sided. Frankly, they do a disservice to other genuine and competent members of India’s comic book industry. I find it interesting to see that something that has plagued one industry for years has finally morphed into something else that will now plague a smaller industry today. Wonder if I’ll start receiving requests every week now? One thing for sure, I will atomize the pitch of any similar Indian studio that tries to sell its wares in the comments below.