Written by Octavia , 2021 Cohort
As a very time-consuming art form, a great animation product always involves countless hours of work time and huge monetary investment. This leads to the fact that in today’s art market, to gain more ground, the artistry of the work always has to be compromised for the potential commercial value. But this also makes us wonder about the possibilities for the development of animation when it gets rid of those commercial strictures.
Shanghai Animation Film Studio
The Changchun Film Studio was established in 1947 in the Northeast Province of China. Based on its special political significance, the studio has received strong support from the government since its inception. After the end of the civil war, the PRC was founded, the new government awarded that animation would be a very important tool to help educate children. With the addition of the early communist economic system, the studio gained a lot of government funding and moved its location to Shanghai which advanced in human resources.
Without any extra concerns, Chinese animation experienced a rapid growth age. During this period, numerous outstanding productions and innovative animation techniques (ink animation, paper-cut animation) have emerged in this field. Those productions combined with traditional folk crafts, the unique artistic style helped them win the highest reputation in the international animation industry in those years.
However, the peak didn’t last too long, with the revolution of the economy, countless private film industries and international companies emerged on the Chinese market. Shanghai Animation Film Studio faced a severe brain drain. Driven by the higher salary rates, animation makers left the studio and decided to join the foundries abroad.
With this tremendous blow, Chinese animation got caught in a long standstill. Even though there are still a huge among of productions that appeared in the market, but under the utilitarianism and impatience environment, how can we produce works with artistic merit？