Chinese animated over computer graphics
news.ft.com
By Alexandra Harney
Published: September 29 2003 5:00 | Last Updated: September 29 2003 5:00
China's cheap labour has catapulted it into global leadership in the production of countless household items - toys, radios and artificial flowers, to name a few.
Now, the world's most populous country is trying to apply the same formula to a more complex industry: animated films. In a modest studio in the southern boomtown of Shenzhen, a computer graphics company is plotting China's assault on Hollywood.
"Our pool of talent in China is endless," says Anthony Neoh, chairman of Global Digital Creations, the studio's owner. "China will rival the US in computer graphics imagery in a few years."
Ambitious as it seems, Mr Neoh's venture illustrates how Chinese companies - with help from international investors - are rapidly diversifying from manufacturing into sectors normally beyond the reach of a country with an annual per capita income of less than $900 (&euro785, £543).
Much of this is happening in the Pearl river delta, which produces more than a third of China's exports each year.
While films such as Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon might suggest otherwise, China has little experience with computer graphics for feature films. Mr Neoh, a Hong Kong lawyer and former chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, and his brother, a computer graphics executive, saw this as an opportunity.
Using their own savings and loans from local banks, they linked with a local university and built a state-of-the-art studio on a dusty road in Shenzhen three years ago.
At the studio, GDC trains 150 students every nine months in the latest computer graphics animation techniques. Teachers are flown in from US film companies; English is also a mandatory part of the curriculum. The course costs $2,000 - a staggering sum for students in China.
Despite the price tag, GDC receives eight applications for every place. Most students are in their 20s and 30s; some have little experience with computers; none has made a feature film before.
GDC hires more than half of the graduates each year, paying them as little as Rmb3,000 ($362, &euro317, £218) a month.
Thru the Moebius Strip, the company's first feature film, is due to be completed by the end of this year and released in early 2004. A vivid tale that combines elements of Hamlet and Jack and the Beanstalk and not noticeably Chinese-made, the film will cost $10m to make.
By comparison, Pixar films cost $75m-$125m. Nickleodeon's Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius was considered low-budget at $30m.
"We are confident that we will be able to match the US studios [on quality]," says Mr Neoh. "We will outperform them five to one on cost."
GDC is not the only group that is turning to southern China for technology. Intel and Oracle both put their first Chinese design and development centres in Shenzhen. Samsung, Epson and IBM, as well as homegrown groups such as Huawei Technologies and ZTE are also there. As a result, technology output in Shenzhen leapt from Rmb23bn in 1995 to Rmb1,321bn in 2001, an annual increase of 36 per cent.
"Although Shenzhen lacks the universities of Beijing or Shanghai, its high-tech base is distinctive in China because it is driven by commercialisation," says Edith Scott, a principal at Enright, Scott & Associates, a Hong Kong-based research group.
"This commercialisation-driven model produces both a skillset and a mindset that can prove very useful to multinationals."
Computer animation is not new to Asia. Artists in South Korea have helped animate the hit US television series The Simpsons. Square, a Japanese software group, created the spectacularly unsuccessful film Final Fantasy.
Nor is southern China a one-stop shop for technology groups. In computer graphics at least, China still lacks sufficient design capabilities. GDC, for example, is using Chinese animators - but they are relying on designs by cult French animator Jean "Moebius" Giraud.
"One of our weak points is that we are not good at research and development," says Guo Zhongxiao, a prominent stock market analyst in Shenzhen.
Shenzhen's limited public transportation also means that most GDC students have to live on campus. Wages are going up as well - Shenzhen's salaries are already the second highest in China after Beijing - a factor which is forcing some manufacturers to move to other parts of the country.
These facts have not dimmed GDC's ambitions. The group opened a school in Shanghai this month, and is planning another in Beijing. It is already working on a sequel to its first film and planning a television series and a computer game.
"We don't presume to aspire to the kind of box office returns that Finding Nemo or Monsters, Inc got," says Mr Neoh. "We would like to be the catalyst for a new industry in China." |
