Jia Xuan | Wen Shi Can | weave
Since the beginning of 2023, the development of the domestic animation market has been somewhat unexpected. During the Spring Festival, the most anticipated animated film "Deep Sea" cost 200 million, but the reputation and popularity of the movie were not as expected. On the contrary, the animated short film collection "China Qitan", which few people cared about before, became a hit at the beginning of the year, which was jointly produced by Station B and Shanghai Art Film Studio (hereinafter referred to as "Shanghai Meiying"), with only 8 episodes, but ended with a Douban score of 9.2 points and a broadcast volume of more than 200 million on Station B.
The emergence of this work has broken the inertia of the animation industry in recent years of commercial large-scale production, and has embarked on a new path of "small and beautiful", which seems to indicate that the domestic animation market is entering a new stage. Big production and big IP are no longer a panacea to win the audience's attention, high-quality story content, diversified exploration and innovation will continue to transfuse the animation industry in the future.
The 3.0 era of domestic animation
The audience's praise for "China Strange Tan" confirms the changes in the domestic animation market.
It is understood that since the two months since the launch of "China Qitan", there have been more than 400 hot searches for related topics on the whole platform, and characters such as "Little Pig Demon" and "Fox Boy" have frequently become hot topics. In terms of the reputation of the work, the Douban score of "China Qitan" once reached 9.6 points, even surpassing Shanghai Meiying's classic animation work "Tianshu Qitan" in 1983.
In the barrage and comments of the B station barrage and comments of the last episode of "Chinese Qitan", "Jade Rabbit", some netizens have begun to anxiously call for the creation and launch of the follow-up second season. The peripheral products related to the episodes of "China Qitan" have also aroused discussions on various platforms, and netizens have expressed their support for animation with actual purchase actions.
B site user reviews
These achievements undoubtedly far exceeded the initial expectations of the "China Wonder Tan" team and the animation industry. Zhang Shengyan, vice president of station B and chief producer of "China Qitan", once said that "China Qitan" is not a project with strong commercial attributes.
In the entire domestic animation market, "China Qitan" is not a head work in terms of content recognition and investment cost. But this work, with its excellent content quality and diversified genre style, was recognized by the animation circle, and even attracted the attention of the public with characters such as the pig demon and stylized aesthetics such as "Goose, Goose and Goose", and achieved a rare out of the circle. This marks that the domestic animation industry and the domestic audience market are undergoing important changes and entering a new stage.
In fact, taking 2010 as a starting point, observing the development and changes of the domestic animation industry, you will find that the industry can be roughly divided into three stages, experiencing an important metamorphosis from stratification to popularization, from unpopular industry to hot money inflow, and output improvement.
Before 2015, in the public impression, domestic animation is more equated with "low child", most of them target young people, relying on parent-child consumption, although there are also "100,000 Cold Jokes" and "Corpse Brother" and other recognized adult to domestic animation works, but the industry output is not stable. In more mature markets such as Europe, the United States, and Japan, animation is an all-age work that adults will also watch. Relatively speaking, the number of domestic adult animation audiences is extremely limited, and there is a lack of long-term soil for incubating national IP.
That changed in 2015. At that time, the big movie "100,000 Cold Jokes" was released, earning back a box office of more than 100 million yuan at a cost of 15 million yuan, becoming the first domestic adult animated film with a box office of more than 100 million. In the second half of the same year, Tian Xiaopeng's "Journey to the West: The Return of the Great Sage" (hereinafter referred to as "The Return of the Great Sage") unexpectedly exploded, and the film received a box office of 617.2 million yuan in 15 days of release, surpassing the box office record set by "Kung Fu Panda 2" in 2011. Everyone recognizes the fact that domestic animation has greater commercial possibilities than expected, and the domestic market also has the ability to incubate the head content that breaks the circle.
Since then, the domestic animation industry has entered the 2.0 stage. Capital "hot money" poured in, B station, Tencent and other video platforms began to establish cooperative relations with various animation production companies, purchase various types of head content IP, have launched animation adaptation plans, the industry appeared "Chinese Diary", "Convex Heroes", "Full-time Master" and other works, the output of domestic animation works increased rapidly, most of the resources of the animation industry were concentrated in head projects, and the content output and industrialization level of the animation industry also increased significantly.
From short-lived to mass production - the domestic animation industry is experiencing a kind of "production boom" in the 2.0 stage. However, the industry has to face the fact that even if the output of works continues to increase and all kinds of IP adaptations are busy, after "The Return of the Great Sage", in addition to the faulty hit "Nezha: The Devil Child Descends", until 2023, the domestic animation industry has not been able to usher in a "national" animation masterpiece for several years. The audience's requirements for content quality and aesthetic taste are improving, and although many animation works have exquisite pictures and superb technology, the homogeneous theme and the story that still needs to be polished often lead to the Douban score of the work only hovering above the passing line.
Since 2021, due to the impact of the external environment, capital investment in the animation field has shrunk, and the return on investment of projects has been considered more cautiously. The head IP has been rolled in, the original content lacks funds, and the domestic animation industry has entered a period of confusion.
Under the background of the downturn of the entire content industry and the reduction of costs and efficiency increase by various companies, the cost and risk of exploring head projects in the animation industry have greatly increased, and the production path dominated by large-scale production and head IP adaptation is obviously not a long-term solution. Should we continue to use resources to smash big productions and big IPs according to the current practice, or explore new paths?
The animation industry passively shuffles and needs to enter a new 3.0 stage, but what is the so-called 3.0 scene, the emergence of "China Wonder", has given the industry a revelation.
"Multi-street" of domestic animation
"Chinese Wonders" is a typical case of small and broad. The work does not have the support of big production and big IP, with the content quality and diversified style, it attracts a large number of netizens and media "tap water", and the double harvest of word of mouth and popularity not only inspires many animation practitioners, but also has important industry reference value.
Obviously, in the new stage of the animation industry, IP adaptation and commercial large-scale production is not the only way out, the industry will focus on the head project, but also need to explore the animation content itself, especially to give new genres and new creative talents more space to play, which will introduce more "living water" to the soil of domestic animation and bring more content and style breakthroughs.
In terms of content type, animated short film collections are a direction to explore.
Chen Liaoyu, the chief director of "China Strange Tan", said that feature films with commercial goals usually take a relatively safe approach, while short films have tasks that short films undertake. The advantage of animated short films is that they are "short", low risk, and have room for bold exploration. The biggest content significance of "Chinese Odd Tan" is that the 8 short films are explored in different ways, to see the story, picture and expression of Chinese animation, and whether there are some other possibilities.
In fact, China Strange Tan isn't the only animated short film project in recent times. In the second half of 2022, the pioneer experimental animated short film collection "Capsule Project", also produced by Station B, received a Douban score of 8.6, taking the lead in winning the reputation of the audience and the industry.
Before the launch of these works, in the hearts of domestic audiences, the animated short film collection was almost equivalent to Netflix's "Love, Death and Robots", and netizens could only rely on words such as "Chinese version of "Love Death" to "Amway" domestic original content.
However, "Chinese Odd Tan" refreshes the public's impression with diversified aesthetic styles and oriental Chinese stories. The Chinese original animated short film series has an independent name and label, which may lay a broad recognition and word-of-mouth foundation for more domestic animation works in the future.
The support for new ideas, new styles and excellent animation talents is even more important.
It is understood that the "China Qitan" project has been carefully considered in the selection of animation directors, mainly young directors aged 30-40. This stems from the fact that most young directors in China have completed a certain degree of accumulation of creative skills and experience, and are in the period of the most vigorous creative desire, but often lack the opportunity to express and show.
For example, Hu Rui, the director of "Goose Goose Goose", was shortlisted for the Annecy Animation Film Festival in France with an animated short film "Visitor" as early as 2010. However, according to Hu Rui's own statement on station B, in order to solve the problem of survival, after creating "The Visitor", Hu Rui devoted himself to commercial creation, and almost never produced original animation content that satisfied him. Until the "China Strange Tan" project, Hu Rui's unique aesthetic style was finally seen and loved by the general audience, and the cross-dressing of the "fox scholar" in "Goose Goose Goose" even went all the way from domestic social platforms to overseas.
In the stage when the domestic animation industry chain is not yet perfect, many domestic animation directors often make a living by participating in large-scale commercial animation projects, devoting themselves to the game CG field, and producing commercial advertising films. Many ideas and ideas that were never seen by the public end up drowning in drafts and discarded paper balls.
The industry is focusing on these "white space" that need to be cultivated. For example, Liu Maoning, the youngest director of "China Strange Tan", was born in 94, and he participated in the "Small Universe Project" (Station B's support program for animation college students) of Station B since the design stage of his graduation from university, and won the Bronze Award for his short film "Me and Magnetite and a Dead Friend". After Liu Maoning's new work "Country Bus Takes Wang Zi'er and Immortals" was broadcast in "China Strange Tan", his previous works were also re-found by B station users, and his work and his recognition are rapidly increasing.
"The country bus took away the king child and the fairy"
The greater development space of new types and new talents requires the industry to continuously build and improve the standardized path of content incubation and talent rise.
The next path for the animation industry is clearly a "multi-lane road". The animation industry pursues the industrialization process and continues to make efforts in production technology and IP development, but at the same time, it also needs to return to story content, explore more content types and creative talents, and provide more creative opportunities and display platforms for new forces.
There has been news that the follow-up development of the second season of "China Qitan" and big movies is already in the planning, perhaps as Chen Liaoyu said, "every effort you spend, the audience will give back to you, give you two, three, or even four points of praise", the animation industry is the same, good content, will eventually get good feedback, there are more possibilities.