Asia Toons In

December 2008

This year, more than 40 years since its television premiere, the Japanese anime Speed Racer received a live-action update in the form of a big-budget theatrical feature from the Wachowski Brothers, and was the basis for a new animated series, Speed Racer: The Next Generation, for Nicktoons Network. The releases were continued proof of the influence Japanese anime has had on the international market for years now. Other Asian territories have been looking to have a similar impact on the global scene. Korea has established itself as a significant powerhouse, as has Singapore, and companies in markets like India and China are letting the world know that they can do a lot more than work-for-hire projects for companies in the U.S. and Europe.

NEW PLAYERS

And there are new entrants on the scene, too. The Malaysian government, through its Multimedia Development Corporation (MDeC), has made raising the country’s profile on the international-animation circuit a priority. Through its MSC Malaysia initiative, MDeC has set its sights on turning Malaysia into a significant player in global kids’ production within the decade. “Malaysians have been creating children’s content since the 1970s, but we never capitalized on this creativity and content to go global,” says Hasnul Nadzrin Shah, MDeC’s industry-development division manager for creative multimedia.

MDeC is working to change that by fostering local talent through MSC Malaysia Animation Centres (MACs) across the country. Kamil Othman, a VP of MDeC, explains that the organization is developing an “environment where preproduction, production and postproduction infrastructures and support systems, including financial programs, are strong, to promote a conducive platform for content development.”

The initiative has already begun to pay off, Othman says, with MDeC’s own Saladin scoring a co-production deal with Al Jazeera Children’s Channel. In addition, Malaysia’s Elemental Ventures has created a joint venture with Epoch Ink Corp. to form Tripod Entertainment, whose first project, a feature-length animated DVD movie entitled War of the Worlds: Goliath, is slated for release at the end of 2009. Tripod is also producing its first animated TV series, Zoorocco, in partnership with South Korea’s Sun Min Image Pictures and a Hollywood team, with lead voice work by James Arnold Taylor of Star Wars: The Clone Wars.

Another Malaysian outfit that has made inroads globally is Inspidea, founded in 2002. Penetrating the international market has been a priority for the company since day one, according to Andrew Ooi, its managing director. “The local market sadly is not that big,” he says. “For us to invest in a production and hope that it is successful, it needs to cater to the international market. That doesn’t mean our shows do not hint at our Asian roots. It pops up here and there, if it needs to. Ultimately, what we produce and distribute always embraces the idea of letting that inner child out, either in the story lines or during the production of the shows.”

Inspidea’s biggest success thus far has been its Mustang Mama franchise, a series of sports-themed animated shorts that is now in its third season. Launched in 2006, the show has been licensed into France, Finland, Italy, Canada, Central Europe, Japan, Singapore, Korea and the Middle East, among other markets.

The company has now embarked upon Ko-Bushi, a co-production with France’s SIP Animation. “It’s an action-comedy short series about little warriors vying for the top position in a Japanese restaurant,” Ooi says. “It is our first co-development and production with SIP Animation. We debuted Ko-Bushi at MIPCOM and we got some positive and interesting feedback.”

In the future, the challenge for Inspidea, Ooi says, is continuing to develop compelling ideas while also taking on the more established players in the kids’ space. “We take that as a positive challenge for the company so that we can energize ourselves to be better at what we do,” Ooi goes on to say. “Most markets have local content quota systems which are meant to stimulate locally made content. We applaud this system because we also want to see what other studios in those countries can do. However, the system?makes gaining entry to those countries, whether you’re a small studio or not, very hard.”

For the next 12 to 18 months, Ooi is hoping that two to three of Inspidea’s development projects will go into production. He is also on the lookout for international partnerships, following the successful collaboration with SIP, as long as they deliver “the best creative and financial results for both companies.”

MADE IN SINGAPORE

A number of Singaporean companies have also been ramping up their international partnerships, thanks in part to the efforts of the government-backed Media Development Authority (MDA) of Singapore. “Three-quarters of the companies that came with us [to MIPCOM] are in the animation space,” says Christopher Chia, the CEO of the MDA, which hosts numerous producers and distributors under its pavilion at trade markets throughout the year. “In the span of five years, Singapore’s animation industry has grown from fewer than 10 companies in 2003 to about 40 today.”

In addition to contributing to the funding of local productions, the MDA has a range of programs to develop the next generation of animators. “There are both public and private initiatives in fostering digital-media talent in Singapore,” explains Chia. “Scholarships, professional upgrading courses, training workshops and master classes on animation and related fields are being offered by the government. Tie-ups with established overseas schools are also in place. Our tertiary education system produces about 1,000 graduates in the digital-media field a year. This talent pool is augmented by well-known international media schools in Singapore, such as the DigiPen Institute of Technology and the New York [University] Tisch School of the Arts. The media companies in Singapore also contribute to the talent pool. Lucasfilm Animation has set up its first 3-D animation studio outside the U.S. in Singapore. The studio recently embarked on an in-house training program aptly named the Jedi Masters Program.”

Among Singapore’s success stories have been two projects from Scrawl Studios: Nanoboy, which was picked up for representation by Cookie Jar Entertainment, and RPG High, a co-?production with DECODE Entertainment. Sparky Animation, meanwhile, recently announced a deal with PorchLight Entertainment for the animated feature The Grimpley Brothers.

Chia also cites Sing to the Dawn, Singapore’s first English-?language animated movie, which was produced by MediaCorp Raintree Pictures, the MDA, Infinite Frameworks (IFW) and Scorpio East Pictures. “The story touches on how an Asian society [moves] from a traditional society into a modern one,” Chia says.

One of the first Singaporean animation series to really make a dent worldwide was Tao Shu: The Warrior Boy, from Peach Blossom Media, a veteran on Singapore’s relatively young animation circuit. The 52×13-minute series was picked up by Nickelodeon Asia and licensed into several other markets. For Lingun Sung, the founder and CEO of Peach Blossom, bringing Asia to the world was always a mandate for the company. “We really felt that we could bring our original voices from this part of the world to a global audience,” he says.

The key, however, was having an international mind-set. At the time of Tao Shu’s success, Sung says, “Asian-originated animation had been pretty parochial. For example, China-made animation that only the Chinese would appreciate, the same went for Malaysia, etc. It was hard for those shows to find legs outside their domestic market. What was groundbreaking for Tao Shu was that while retaining unique cultural features (such as the colorful peasant-folk-art-inspired designs), we made sure the stories were universal and would appeal to an international audience.”

Sung credits the diversity of Peach Blossom’s team with the company’s success in developing properties that have universal appeal. “The key is to make sure that in our pursuit of the ‘global audience,’ we retain what is unique and fresh about our show and don’t water down our ideas into generic, run-of-the-mill ideas.”

Sung is pleased with Peach Blos?som’s progress in the international market so far, but he is positioning the company to make an even bigger impact, recently aligning it with the U.K.’s Evergreen Entertainment for the global rollout of new content.

Shapes, a preschool series, is one of Peach Blossom’s highlights for the Asia TV Forum. It’s a show that Sung believes “embodies the Peach Blossom sensibility. We created a beautiful visual style where basic shapes like triangles, circles, etc., form fun (and slightly mischievous) characters on-screen. We modernized an ancient Asian shapes-based puzzle game called tangrams and gave it a new, vibrant look. Then we took folktales from around the world and retold them in a fun and engaging way. Preschool audiences really responded to the vibrant shapes and fun stories.”

Peach Blossom’s emphasis on original content creation is in line with trends in the Singaporean media industry. As the MDA’s Chia notes, many companies are “moving from fee-for-service [projects] to owning partial or full rights to the content they produce, and penetrating the global market on the back of international co-productions.”

OUT OF INDIA

One territory that has been a huge player in the work-for-hire market is India, with numerous outfits shopping their low-cost animation services to the biggest producers in the kids’ market. A number of companies, however, are keen to move away from this model. One venture that has done so is UTV Toons, a division of UTV Software Communications, whose previous credits include having worked on the Canadian series Tripping the Rift. “True brands and global companies [are] created when you are in control of your own destiny, at the top end of the value chain, and in direct touch with your consumer,” says Ronnie Screwvala, the CEO of UTV. “In animation, we understand this place very well, having built one of the first animation studios in the country. But we believe there is much more value for the company and its shareholders to create IP in the animation space than do work for hire in a very competitive environment.” UTV Toons has three animated features in the works, tentatively slated for release in 2009.

The booming kids’ channel space in India has certainly created room for local players to generate culturally relevant TV fare that strikes a chord with viewers. Cartoon Network India, for example, has aired a number of Indian animated series to great success, among them The Legend of Prince Ram, The Adventures of Tenali Raman, Bal Hanuman and the Krishna series.

The major players, however, are looking outside of Indian borders for growth. Among the most successful has been DQ Entertainment (DQE), which has become a frequent go-to partner for international producers; the company’s credits include working on PorchLight Entertainment’s Tutenstein, Entertainment Rights’s Casper’s Scare School, Taffy Entertainment’s Twisted Whiskers and Marvel’s Iron Man: Armored Adventures. At MIPCOM, DQE announced a deal with France’s LPPTV and Method Animation to co-produce a Little Prince TV series, backed by France 3.

Little Prince is the latest in DQE’s efforts to take an ownership stake in the properties it works on, often representing the rights to those co-produced projects in Asia, the Middle East and select other territories.

Other current projects for DQE include two 2-D animated TV movies inspired by Indian mythology, as well as a CGI-animated Bollywood theatrical feature. The company has animation facilities in cities across India, recently recruiting more than 850 new artists to work on its projects while training a further 1,000 at the DQ Schools of Visual Arts. With its infrastructure in place, DQE is keen on further expansion in 2009, capitalizing on the increasing fascination with the Indian media market. India, says Tapaas Chakravarti, the chairman and CEO of DQE, has “tremendous technology depth, a rich culture [of] storytelling?and a young and literate workforce which is delivering the highest-international-quality productions. The current situation of the international economy makes India an even more attractive destination for production.”

FROM THE EAST

China, like India, has amassed a significant animation talent pool—there are said to be some 5,400 animation companies operating in the country, along with a host of animation schools. Thus far, however, China has not emerged as a major co-producer of kids’ content globally; but there are companies looking to change that. The Shanghai Media Group, for example, recently entered into a partnership with the U.K.-based Chorion to jointly develop new animation projects targeted at the 6-to-11 set for the worldwide market. “This partnership offers an exciting opportunity to showcase Chinese program-making talent to the world,” said Wang Lei, the deputy director of animation for the drama center of SMG, at the time of the announcement.

Shanghai also serves as a base for Dream Tube Entertainment, a newly formed studio that also has offices in Hong Kong. The venture was established primarily to deliver high-quality English-language content to the worldwide market. Dream Tube is currently working on Zip-A-Gang, a puppetry-based series for kids aged 6 to 11. Next up will be Dinoblaze, currently in preproduction, about a group of dinosaurs that are enamored with extreme sports. “We will utilize a combination of broadcast, Internet, mobile and retail channels to target all ages,” says Tommy Tam, a co-producer at the company. “Broadcast syndication in the U.S., Japan and Europe is our ultimate goal. Once established, we will continue to build our core business by focusing on branding, licensing and merchandising.”

For Asia’s more established animation markets—Japan and Korea—the key is continuing to develop fare that will resonate with kids from around the world, and make a dent in a crowded marketplace. As Keisuke Tsuchihashi, a producer at the Programming Development Center at NHK, notes, “Although we still feel the demand, maybe the international market is becoming a bit crowded with Japanese animation. Also, the [market conditions] for animation sales are pretty tough, especially because of pirated editions on the Internet.”

NHK, however, through its MICO international sales arm, continues to fare well with its animation globally. “We sell programs equally to Asia, Europe and North America,” Tsuchihashi says. “We see Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia and India as emerging markets.”

The company’s major successes include Samurai 7, based on the Akira Kurosawa classic, and Domo, a series of shorts that was recently acquired by Nicktoons Network in the U.S., following a rollout on Nickelodeon’s international channels in Europe, Latin America, Australia and New Zealand. NHK’s new crop of animation titles includes The Telepath Girl; Why? With Animals; Allison & Lillia; and Tytania. “We are confident that these shows can entertain all ages,” says Tsuchihashi. “These were all broadcast on NHK and there are no extreme expressions for children to watch (the content is free of violence, sexual images, etc), which we think can meet the demands for many broadcasters in Asia.”

A number of anime producers have elected to set up shop in the U.S. and Western Europe in order to further their international ambitions. Toei Animation, for example, recently beefed up its senior team in Los Angeles in order to further its presence in the North American market, and is restructuring its operations in other parts of the world. “We are working on reengineering the organization of each overseas office to expand our digital-media/mobile-content business, to incubate co-productions and to expand our overseas operation to new markets,” says Kanji Kazahaya, the president and COO of Toei Animation, Inc., in Los Angeles and the director of the international department at the Japanese parent company. Key emerging territories for Toei, Kazahaya says, include the Nordic countries, Eastern Europe, Russia, India, the Middle East, Latin America and Africa.

Kazahaya lists as Toei’s biggest international success thus far the Dragon Ball franchise, most notably the Dragon Ball Z series, based on the manga by Akira Toriyama. “The story line is so well refined even after 24 years from the first manga, it never gets old and it [continues to appeal to] all generations.”

Having built a successful business on traditional broadcast sales, especially in the U.S., France, Italy, Spain and Taiwan, Toei is eyeing new-media platforms for the next stage in its international growth. “We are getting more flexible in introducing different styles for different opportunities; for mobile content, for VOD, for IPTV, for everyday broadcasting,” Kazahaya continues. “For this purpose, we are looking for different styles of stories and characters.”

KOREA’S ANIMATION WAVE

The Korean animation outfit Iconix Entertainment is also looking at non-traditional sales as it copes with the challenges of the kids’ market today, according to sales manager Wonjung Kim. Finding new platforms and generating unique concepts will be key, Kim notes, as Iconix expands its international activities. Successes so far have included licensing Nalong Fly to the Sky and Spheres to KidsCo, and scoring a slot on Five’s Milkshake! block for Chiro. Kim notes that Chiro received a strong reception at MIPCOM, and further sales are expected to be announced soon in Europe and Asia. Chiro will be on offer at the ATF, alongside Z Rangers, a boy-targeted property that aired on Korea’s biggest terrestrial, KBS.

Iconix’s most significant hit worldwide, however, has been Pororo the Little Penguin, which has also become a licensing and merchandising success. “It seems that there is no product category left [for preschoolers] which doesn’t have the Pororo label,” says Kim. “The show has been sold to over 90 countries so far and has now started to grow its licensing business in Europe.”

Broadcast partners have included TF1 and Tiji in France, Cartoon Network U.K., TV 2 in Denmark, Yoyo in Taiwan and TVB in Hong Kong, among others. A third season is under way, to be launched on Korea’s EBS next year.

Another Korean firm that has made inroads internationally is Daewon Media. According to Hoyoung Jung, the manager of the content division and international department, the sci-fi adventure Cubix has aired in the U.S. and will be a lead offering at the Asia TV Forum. Iron Kid, meanwhile, a Spanish co-production, has scored slots in the U.S., France, Italy, India and Australia, among other markets. One of Daewon’s newest series is Noonbory and the Super 7, co-produced with Cookie Jar, which launched the show to international buyers at MIPCOM.

The global market is certainly more open to Asian concepts than it ever has been, across a variety of genres, leaving animation houses in the region with a sense of optimism as they weather the current economic crisis. As DQE’s Chakravarti notes, “There is a growing appreciation of our abilities and our credentials as reliable partners?leading to an increased acceptance of our projects internationally as well as on the domestic front.”