Muhamad Bilal

Early life and background

Bilal played Quake in a gaming clan in Islamabad, and he and his friends aspired to become game programmers. He said he got into animation largely by accident. He did not know that an animation industry existed when he began. [1]

Early career

When he graduated, Bilal was clear that he wanted to work in graphics programming. He moved to Karachi because his family was moving there. He found few professional game programming companies in Karachi. He ended up at a company that was doing post-production as well as animation. [1]

Bilal's former boss had worked in the Far East for many years and was one of the pioneers of post-production in Pakistan. The former boss had recently returned to Pakistan and secured funding to start a company. He hired many recruits and invested heavily in their training, and he was looking for people with a technical background and some interest in animation. Bilal and his colleagues learned animation from VHS tutorials bought abroad. [1]

Ice Animations

In 2008, Bilal left a company to form Ice Animations with his former boss. Ice Animations operated under a group of companies. At Ice Animations, Bilal and his team wanted to create their own shows for the global market. Bilal said it is hard to make global content from Pakistan without exposure to the Western entertainment industry. Ice Animations started getting into services work. [1]

Ice Animations had a presence in the MENA region. It partnered with Cartoon Network to make a show for that region, and Bilal said the show proved very successful. He said the show's concept was developed in Abu Dhabi while his studio executed the project. He also said the quality of the studio's animation let it compete with top studios from Singapore and Thailand. [1]

Later work

Bilal left Ice Animations in December and wanted to move to Islamabad. He said he felt he had done what he could in Karachi and that a newer generation should take the work further. He said he has gone back into the game industry, where he started. His current company is a middleware company that serves a parent company targeting games, visual effects and animation. [1]

Experience

Bilal said he has 17 years of animation experience in Pakistan. He said he was part of a core group that kept working on top campaigns in Pakistan. He has worked with musicians, art directors and ad agencies. By his own account he has little experience of forms of animation such as architectural visualization. [1]

Views

Bilal said progress in animation depends heavily on economics. In his view, a typical animated movie in Pakistan is barely possible on the budget available, and box-office returns are too low to justify large animation budgets. He noted that Pakistan has very few cinema screens. He also said one film proved that an animated movie can earn quite a lot of money at the box office. [1]

Bilal said spending several years on an animated movie is standard industry practice. He said he is very confident that Pakistan can make a very good animated movie if the time is invested. He said the bigger problem is that demand for animation has not been created, and that talent is not the main problem for Pakistani animation. He also said Pakistan's animation supply chain has not been properly built. [1]

Bilal said the number of people and brands in Pakistani animation has changed little over his career. He said India had a larger population and an established film industry, which helped its animation grow. He said it is easy to get away with half knowledge when the industry is not established. In his view, many people can make these animations, but the business model does not justify producing them. [1]

Bilal described animation as a techno-creative industry that needs new technology and R&D every year. He said a film that does not adopt new techniques will look dated next to Disney and Pixar, which he said created a universal animation language that works everywhere. He said a localised, gritty show in the style of Sacred Games would make sense for Pakistan. He also said content has to look right on a mobile device as well. [1]

Bilal said Pakistani children find Disney shows easy to watch, and that he sees a massive gap in content for younger children. He said kids' animation is simplified so that children can concentrate. He said he sees no reason Pakistan should not be making animated shows in Urdu, noting that most of Pakistan's population does not understand English. [1]

Bilal said most brands want aspirational, Westernised content. He said creators have not yet found a cheap way to make recurring animated content, and that YouTube does not pay creators much in Pakistan. He said he has spoken to many animation creators who wanted to make this kind of content. He also said low monetisation reduces the motivation to create content. [1]

Bilal said it looks almost impossible to him for an individual artist to thrive, and that a typical creative does not earn much money. He said most people are going for engineering and other standard disciplines. He also said many people are not motivated to pursue ten years of hardcore practice to become better artists. [1]

Bilal said he felt the level of art was going down. He added that freelance websites such as Fiverr let people start earning at home in their first year. [1]

Timeline

2008

Left a company to form Ice Animations with his former boss.[1]

Appearances

Frequently asked questions

References

1. Building animation in Pakistan requires more than just talent . Thought Behind Things , 2020-11-09.