NEW DELHI: Escotoonz Animation Studio, a part of the Escorts Group, has signed a co-production deal with Europe's CyberDodo Productions for a 2D animation series on children's rights.

The Faridabad-based 2D animation company will work on pre-production and production of the 36-epsiode five-minute series titled`CyberDodo'.

aConfirming the development, Escotoonz head of production, Alice Manuel said, "We will be working pre-production with CyberDodo Productions apart from handling the entire animation production. The post production will be handled by another animation studio in the UK. Each episode is of five minutes and it primarily talks about children rights. Each episode will have a different script."

According to Escotoonz production manager Mahesh Newalkar, the animation production is expected to finish by March next year. The studio, which was launched in July 2001, had recently finished its first international animation production 'King'. The 13-episode 22-minute series was commissioned by Canada's Funbag Animation Studio. Besides Escotoonz and Funbag, Decode Entertainment was the other co-producer. The series has been being premiered on the Family channel in Canada.

Escotoonz is currently working only for international markets. "We are doing a mix of service-oriented work as well as co-production, so we have a share of the property rights," added Manuel. It had earlier produced animation for advertisements and documentary films after setting up its
operations.

On the structuring of the organisation, Manuel said, "It's a mix of fixed and variable or contractual model. For instance, if we have an employee on 12-month contract who can work on a new project after the previous one finishes, we extend the contract for another period. Most of our 195-odd team is in animation department - in clean-up, creative supervision or managerial role, but it is tough to give the break-up in terms of fixed or variable model."