LIVERPUTTY: China wants to develop an animation industry

Thursday, March 23, 2006

Angry Chinese Blogger has the scoop. I'd be curious to get 8th Man's take, as he has personal experience with animation and China.

8th Man said...: It's true that I did spend some time supervising animation in China about four years ago. This article is interesting for me mostly in the numbers quoted. 16,700 hours a year is bordering on silly. 45 hours a day? that's like having two channels of nothing but original material running day and night.
I was actually surprised to read that 500 hours are already being produced domestically. When I was there, the studio I worked in was trying to get some original shows going, but it was a challenge. It makes me wonder what will happen when more studios start to do original work and have to compete with the bootleg problem. Why would the Chinese people buy any of the animation produced in thier own country when they are used to getting bootlegs for next to nothing?
I could ask the same thing about software in China. Most of it is ripped off too.
Maybe having thier own industry will help.
On a side note, the studio I worked in was actually owned by the Taiwanese. I think the one across the street was too. It makes me wonder if there were many studios around that were actually Chinese owned at all. And if so, were they government owned?
It seems obvious that if they want 16,700 hours it's probably "the people" who will pay for it since I doubt any of the studios could do that on their own.; 3:36 PM