Panda blockbuster inspires Chinese animators to kick on

By Tan Weiyun  |   2008-7-12  |     NEWSPAPER EDITION

AS Hollywood blockbuster "Kung Fu Panda" demon-strated with its record- breaking run at the Chinese box office, there is a huge appetite among the country's cinema fans for animated films.

In its first three weeks in Chinese cinemas, "Kung Fu Panda" raked in more than 135 million yuan (US$19.6 million), prompting a group of Chinese animators, designers and comic artists to get together in the new Shanghai Comics and Animation Valley to draw up a plan for the local animation industry to capitalize on this public demand.

Set up last month, Animation Valley in Zhangjiang Hi-tech Park plans to attract more than 200 animation-related enterprises in five to 10 years and aims to be the country's creative hub for an industry that is set to boom in China.

"China's animation industry has to find its own profit making model," says Yuan Liqiang, general manager of the Shanghai Zhangjiang Creative Industry Development Co Ltd.

Yuan made the comments at an animation forum held on Tuesday at the Zhangjiang Hi-tech Park.

China produced a total of 100,000 minutes of animated cinema last year. "However, a Hollywood panda with Chinese kung fu easily punched the 100,000 minutes to pieces," says Yuan.

"We are not short of good animators but what we need now is a healthy legal system to protect copyright and an open platform for artists to promote their work."

Animation Valley, inaugurated last month in Zhangjiang Hi-tech Park, is such a platform for Chinese animators and investors to meet each other as well as an incubator for domestic animation films, according to Yuan.

"The valley is not a place that only wants to attract companies to the area - we're not doing real estate," says Yuan.

"What we are doing is trying to build an open market of fund-raising for animation makers and a film trading center for investors."

On of the events at last month's Shanghai International Film Festival was the Shanghai Animation Pitching Project, which was held at Animation Valley.

World renowned animation professionals offered training and mentoring to young Chinese animators who had their trailers selected by film traders.

"This is a common practice in almost every international film festival, but it's still new to China's animation industry," said Yuan.

"Many excellent Chinese films are neglected just because of a lack of an opportunity for people to see them. Now we provide a platform for them, and let investors decide what they want."

The event was well received by animation makers and artists. More than 100 animation trailers from all parts of China were submitted for the event.

Ten were selected as "qualified works" and 20 were judged "excellent works," which investors were prepared to fund so they could be turned into TV series, films or online-games.

But Yuan says piracy is still the biggest headache for the industry.

"Rampant pirate recording in China poses a great threat to the industry's survival," he says.

According to international norms, more than 70 percent of the profits generated in the animation industry come from a film's video sales and its related merchandizing, such as T-shirts, profile cards, posters and toys.

"The most vital link of the whole industry chain is the copyright," Yuan says.

"Unfortunately, this is impossible in China at the moment. There is still a long way to go in the country's fight against piracy."