Domestic Animation Kui Ba [Photo: The Chinese Film Market]
Several years ago, Hollywood studios such as Pixar and DreamWorks had found it diffcult to break into the China market, for their productions: ‘Finding Nemo’, ‘Cars’ and
‘Shrek’, after sweeping the cinemas in all the other regions in the world, received disappointing box offce results. Five years ago, a market analyst even told the press that the Chinese audience does not have a habit to see animated flms in the cinemas.
Years later, it is an entire different story. Animated flms, local or foreign, have won the attention of the country’s audience. Compared to less than fve local animated released annually in the past, there are more than 24 local animated flms released theatrically in 2011.
The growing multiplexes in the country encouraged teenagers and family movie-goers to watch animations in cinemas. Animation is now one of their favored genres.
The attention reached a climax in the summer of 2011 with fve locally-produced animated flms released in a period of two months and two major animations competing against each other in the same week. Teenager fans even lined up in front of the theater’s promotion booth, trying to get autographs, not of the movie stars, but of the animators.
The flm that attracted this frenzy is called ‘Kuiba’, produced by Beijing-based animation studio Vasoon Animations.
The story of ‘Kuiba’ tells about the fantasyland called Vast, a world that is similar to the Middle Earth in ‘The Lord of the Rings’.
Two grass root fghters, despite unqualifed to be the so-called ‘Spirit Warriors’, are determined to fght against the demon creature called ‘Kuiba’ with their hot-boiled spirits. Eventually they break the rigid rank system of ‘Spirit Warriors’ and win the respect of their fellow warriors. Kuiba’s character look more like those in Japanese Manga works: fowing hairs, giant eyes and sharp chins. The settings are Chinese styled architectures plus steam punk favors with fying vessels and ships, driven by multiple species of animals. Similar to the works of Hayao Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli, Kuiba maintains 2D in its characters while using 3D to draw parts of its settings.
Although the flm’s box offce takings are less than satisfactory, it received feverish support from its fans. During the screening, they hailed or even screamed when each character of the flm appearing in the story, creating quite a sensation in Beijing’s normally calm cinemas.
The other competing flm ‘Legend of A Rabbit’, produced by Tianjin Film Studio presents a different style but the same effort to raise the bar of local animation quality. The audience might feel reminiscent of ‘Kung Fu Panda’ in this 3D animation especially in its rounded-shaped protagonist the Rabbit. But the purely local production has indeed impressed the audience with its technical efforts such as the smoothness of motion capture works and the attentions to hair and skin details. The flm has also set a new record of international pre-sale, closing deals in France, Russia and South East Asia even before the completion of the flm.
Later in August and September, three local productions ‘Seer’, ‘Roco Kingdom’ and ‘Legend of the Moles: The Frozen Horror’ were also released. All adapted from young children’s (aged 5 – 10) adventure online games, theses works own more fan base than the above two flms, and gained even better theatrical revenues. ‘Seer’ took in more than RMB 40 million and was seen as a major success.
From late 1980s to mid 1990s, China has been famous for being a manufacturing factory of international animations with the so-called Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) models. Cities such as Shanghai, Hangzhou, Guangzhou and Shenzhen have become the hub of major animation manufacturers. Companies took orders from overseas for producing international TV animation series or animated flms.
During mid 1990s Chinese animation companies began to explore original productions, and it has become a major trend among animation studios since year 2000. Wang Chuan and Wu Hanqing are among the front runners in this trend.
They recruited a group of young artists and animators and founded Vasoon in 1992.
“We felt the need to move from the lower end of animation production to the upper stream,” Wang said. It took Vasoon 6 years to work on ‘Kuiba’ to build up the brand.The studio is now producing four other ‘Kuiba’ series movies, two other feature-length flms, as well as fve TV series.
Companies walking on the similar path to shift from manufacturing to original content include StarQ Information Technology, known for 3D animation series ‘Qin’s Moon’ and Creative Power Entertaining, known for the popular movie series ‘Pleasant Goat’ and the ‘Big Bad Wolf’.
Another reason behind the booming of local animation industry is the endorsement of government policies.
Since 2004, the Chinese government announced a series of policies to encourage animation-production businesses. These efforts include setting up 19 “animation production bases” (an industrial compound of animation studios) across the country, preferential tax deduction, government funding and a restriction on foreign animation products to protect the local industry. The policies require local TV networks to air foreign animation series up to 40% of their total animation airing time. Foreign animations are also excluded for prime-time broadcast.
“The government policies have given local animators a wider stage and we believe it is the key to encourage local creativity,” said Sun Lijun, director of ‘Legend of a Rabbit’.In 2011, China produces a total of more than 100 animated feature flms with 24 of them released in cinemas. The box offce takings of these flms reach RMB 300 million, which is almost double of the theatrical revenue in 2010. “It is actually not exaggerating to say that it is a new age of Chinese animated flms,” said a manager from distribution company Beijing City Film Corporation.
For the moment, most animation studios are eager to develop their brands and styles. Yet, during the beginning of the “new age”, none of them has a better infuence on the market. While Vasoon’s ‘Kuiba’ series aim at teenage or young adult fantasy fans, Creative Power’s ‘Pleasant Goat’ series target on children and family audience. Studios such as Tianjin Film Studio and Shanghai Animation Studio engages in 3D animations.
“We see all our products as long-term projects. The fervent support of our fans is the frst step; the next step is to take this loyalty of our brand further, and turn it into major profts,” said Vasoon CEO Wu Hanqing.