Shanghai cartoon studio strives for edge in crowded market as foreign ... - Washington Post

SHANGHAI â€" Chinese cartoonist Carol Liu Hong built her studio from scratch, doing post-production work for TV commercials and then, once she broke even, realizing her dream of creating cartoons for Chinese kids.

Breaking into a market dominated by state media companies has been tough â€" even more so now that Kungfu Panda creator DreamWorks Animation SKG and other big cartoon giants are launching their own local studios in China.

Liu has gotten some help. Seeking to nurture creative industries, the Shanghai government gave her studio, Shanghai Cartoon Communication Group, a choice location. But its success so far mainly stems from its ability to balance cartoon making with sales of related products, she says.

Having drawn-in-China cartoons high on the national entertainment agenda also helps local creators: Prime time is reserved for domestic cartoons â€" no “Winnie the Pooh” or “Tom and Jerry” between 5-9 p.m. because China’s culture czars want a say in the content shown to the country’s 300 million under-14-year-olds.

Also high on the agenda: breaking into a huge global industry. China has yet to strike that magic formula that draws audiences across borders and age groups.

“China’s cultural influence has not matched its economic growth and officials here want to spread Chinese culture abroad,” said Sun Shaoyi, a professor of film and television at Shanghai University.

The recent slew of alliances between industry giants like DreamWorks and the Walt Disney Co., which is building a theme park in Shanghai, will bring in new technology and help improve local industry standards, says Liu, whose studio has worked on foreign projects for years.

But such collaboration has its limits, she says, since cartoons that work in the U.S. might not go over well in China, especially among adults.

“In some cases, the kids really like it, but TV stations say they are unacceptable,” Liu says. While American schools and families might encourage children to think for themselves, “in China, it’s all about obeying the teachers.”

Shanghai animation saw its heyday in the 1960s, before the anti-intellectual frenzy of the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, when artists and teachers were persecuted and a generation of urban teens was sent to work in the countryside.

China now has 2,400 schools providing animation training. But generally China is not really doing enough to support homegrown animation, Liu says, especially smaller studios like hers, which employs about 200 people in Shanghai and another studio in the nearby city of Wuxi.

“To shift from quantity to quality is now the biggest challenge for Chinese cartoon makers,” she says. “There’s also the problem of piracy. It doesn’t do any good to have favorable policies if you don’t protect the commercial strength of the producers.”

DreamWorks’ $330 million new venture with China Media Capital, state-run Shanghai Media Group and Shanghai Alliance Investment â€" christened Oriental DreamWorks â€" will make animated and live action movies for the Chinese and world markets while developing related businesses such as products, interactive games and theme parks.