Once we set foot in Guangdong Huawen Century Animation’s offices, Wen Jianfeng, the conpany’s GM, let us take a sneaky peek at the first episode of WotWots Kiddets, a co-produced animation for pre-school children.

Wen looked satisfied with the animation and said quite excitedly, “See how high the saturation is...The production values are really high. I believe it will appeal to our overseas audiences as well.”

Wen Jianfeng has reason to be confident. WotWots Kiddets was co-produced with the high-profile Pukeko Pictures which is the New Zealand animation studio co-founded by Richard Taylor, the creative director of The Lord of Rings film series.

And Weta Workshop, who’ve served as the production team for many famous pieces, including The Lord of Rings and Avatar, was invited to handle some early design of the characters.

Trailer for WotWots Kiddets provided by Huawen Century

“We cooperate and learn from each other...”

“It’s definitely good for our business,” said Wen Jianfeng. He mentioned that the cooperation had a clear and professional division of duties. Pukeko was responsible for the script, design and animatics while Huawen Century did all the animation synthesis.

“This model takes advantage of our different strengths. Pukeko has a remarkable design team. And we have the team to efficiently handle the synthesis process, which takes up about 60% of the overall workload,” said Wen.

This project also enables Huawen Century, a local animation company, to begin to learn and adapt to the standards required of a world class production. Specifically, Wen was impressed by the way in which overseas partner approached the production process.

“Weta Workshop always provides us five drafts for every object in the animation, including the characters and their costumes,” Wen Jianfeng said, “we choose two out of the five with reasons attached, and then send back to them to make final decision.”

“I think this is a very smart though it has rather high requirement on the team’s design abilities. Through such a process, both Pukeko and Weta can gain more insights into the Chinese market, including what we like and what we don’t,” he added.

Wen Jianfeng, GM of Huawen Century, in an interview with Newsgd.com. [PhotoNewsgd.com]

On the other hand, Huawen Century has the resources to help Pukeko Pictures and its animation ideas to more easily penetrate the Chinese market. Wen Jianfeng said apart from co-production, marketing is one of their most important roles in this partnership.

He explained that Huawen Century would help WotWots Kiddets broadcast on domestic TV channels, and organize various offline promotions, such as holding fairs and building theme parks. “We also design side-products and sell them via our retail networks, which include hundreds of thousands of stores nationwide.”

A member of Huawen Century is designing side-products for an animation. [PhotoNewsgd.com]

Guangdong has the right “soil” for animation industry

Huawen Century is a rather successful example in Guangdong showcasing local animation enterprises’ global expansion. In fact, Guangdong is always in the lead when it comes to driving China’s thriving animation business.

In 2016, Guangdong contributed to one third of overall output of the animation industry in China (income from side-products not included). In addition, the province also produced 80 percent of the top-ratedi domestic animations on national TV channels and eight out of the ten domestic animated movies with top box office results last year.

“Guangdong has the right ‘soil’ to develop animation industry,” said Wen Jianfeng, “the three most popular animations in China, including GG Bond, Boonie Bears and Pleasant Goat, are all generated here. And Guangdong has its well established manufacturing industry, meaning easy collaboration on a variety of side-products.”

Huawen Century produces toys for WotWots Kiddets [Newsgd.com]

Besides, Guangdong also provides loads of opportunities to bridge local enterprises with their global partners. Given the joint project, Huawen Century has attended the Tripartite Economic Summit which is held among Guangzhou, Auckland and Los Angeles two times in a row, and has confirmed to be in the upcoming 2017 summit this year.

“Since our participation, we get connected with lots of resources, such as factories and online retailers,” said Wen Jianfeng, “and once the production of WotWots Kiddets was completed, we might have more helps on import&export and media promotion.”

Author: Jasmine Yin

Editor: Simon Haywood & Olivia Yang