The 2006 China Cartoon Industry Forum got off to a flying start at Wuxi on 20 September, with local Chinese officials including the mayor and other dignitaries from the ministry of culture officially flagging it off. The common theme at the fourth forum was how to convert China into an animation force globally.
Delegations from Korea, France, Japan, Russia and the US attended. Animation Xpress.com was there from India.
The officials spoke about the support that the Chinese government was giving to animation studios in the form of low cost infrastructure. “Animation bases have been set up,” said Forum coordinator Liyui Wang. “China is extremely serious about making the country an animation superpower”
Former Pixar technical director and Electronic Arts technical art director Leo Hourvitz spoke about ‘The Long Tail’, a term coined by Chris Andersen. He described how and why there’s a market even in non-hits. He spoke about music download service Rhapsody wherein not only is every one of its top 100,000 tracks streamed at least once each month, the same is true for its top 200,000, top 300,000, and top 400,000. As fast as Rhapsody adds tracks to its library, those songs find an audience, even if it’s just a few people a month, somewhere in the country.
Similar would be the case with animation content. There has to be a large variety and there would be consumers for each kind of content. There are however many ways to approaching the challenge that lies in distribution and consumer access model for this kind of content.
Hourivitz was followed by Animation Xpress.com Chairman Anil Wanvari who spoke about the Indian Animation, VFX, Gaming and Mobile Industry. He said that the Indian Animation Industry was a sizeable $300 million strong and that it was growing at a compounded 30 per cent per annum. He added that there was great opportunity for Indo Chinese collabaration in the form of outsourcing from India. “Indian and Chinese studios should also work together on co-productions, maybe even create original series which could find a market all over the world. Why should animation be the preserve of Disney, and European animation studios? Asia has the talent, we should channelise it right,” Wanvari said to thunderous applause.
Wanvari spoke about the merits of outsourcing by both countries. “We should play to our strengths, some work india can take up, some China. We have to form a frontier” he said pointing out that additionally, China could work as a manufacturing outpost for Indian animation characters in shape of toys and merchandise. Wanvari also pointed out that there was also scope in terms of sharing educational expertise with each other.