Hangzhou to enter animation season, are you ready?

2018-03-27 05:07:31

From April 26 to May 1, the 14th China International Cartoon & Animation Festival (CICAF) will be held in the White Horse Lake Animation Plaza in Binjiang District of Hangzhou. 

As a national professional animation festival and exhibition, CICAF is an important platform to display the development of China's animation industry every year. It is also a major access for the global animation industry to enter the Chinese market. 

iABC, an annual weather vane to see China's animation and game industry 

As the business section of CICAF, the International Animation Game Business Conference (iABC) will be held at the First World Hotel in Hangzhou from April 25 to 27. The activities will focus on the five sections of "content trading, copyright authorization, creative venture investment, business matching, theme sessions". 

It is reported that the event will attract more than 80 Chinese children's channels, new media, and distributors, more than 1,500 domestic and foreign animation and game companies, and over 4,000 professional viewers. In addition, Canada, the United Kingdom, Malaysia, Russia, South Korea will organize delegations to participate in the event. 

iABC has been taken as a weather vane of China's animation and game industry and a platform for business exchanges among professionals. It has become a bridge of cooperation and exchange between Chinese and foreign animation companies.

This year's iABC is full of bright spots. The Buyers Club and one-to-one negotiation activity will invite more than 100 buyers from the domestic and foreign legacy media, new media, and distribution agencies to select excellent new animation films home and abroad at the scene. On the occasion, Oriental Creative Color with Infinite Boundary, Dazzling Star Animation with Peking Opera Cats 3, Hebei Elite with Ye Luoli 6, 2:10 Animation, and China Literature will release new films on the stage. 

This year, the one-to-one negotiation seats will be expanded to 60. The venue is placed in the First World Hall with 1,000 square meters. Apart from domestic and foreign legacy media, new media, distribution and agency institutions, and distributors, there will be groups from the United Kingdom,Canada, and South Korea. 

The popular IPs in the market will also be released at the conference. The organizing committee will invite China Literature to issue Fights Break Sphere and The King’s Avatar ,EMPIRE Multimedia to release Assassin's Creed , and JY Animation, Guangzhou Art-Land, and Alpha Animation and Culture to publish heavyweight IPs, concerning the authorization and cooperation programs of these IPs in 2018. 

In 2018, iABC IABC will put forward the e-sports club investor meeting, e-sports cross-border meeting and animation game content matchmaking meeting, to grasp the trend of the market, and explore the direction of the animation game industry.

COSPLAY super show 

1,085 societies compete for tickets of Hangzhou finals

China COSPLAY Super Show is an activity most loved by 2D crowds in the CICAF. As a result of many years of cultivation and development, it has become an international COSPLAY competition with the largest number of domestic divisions and the first overseas divisions. 

According to statistics, China COSPLAY Super Show has so far opened up 25 competition division zones in Beijing, Nanjing, Harbin, Tianjin, Guangzhou, Wuhan, Chongqing and Hangzhou. In layout, it radiates surrounding cities with each provincial capital city as the axis. Apart from the domestic division zones, it has also opened international competition division zones in the United States, the Netherlands, Singapore, Spain, Hungary, Denmark, France, Switzerland, Japan, Thailand and Malaysia, and regional competition division zones in Taiwan and Hong Kong. 

According to the official statistics, this year there will be 1,085 direct participating societies nationwide, as well as 10,303 participants and 210,000 exhibition viewers. There will be 87 national teams and 1,348 contestants in the finals in Hangzhou. Both the number of participating societies and participants will double from those of last year.

Voice Contest 

The War of creating "actor's actor” voice in animation circles

The 14th CICAF Voice Contest will expand the scope of participation on the basis of maintaining the existing features. It will actively encourage people interested in dubbing and imitation talents in the society to sing up for the competition and select dubbing talents through multiple channels. The contest will bring in domestic well known animation companies, new media organizations and leading studios in the industry, to confront face to face with contestants, so as to give contestants an opportunity to show, and enterprises, institutions and renowned studios a platform to recruit talents, and make the contest the biggest platform for the voice talents in the country with higher participation of the people, stronger entertainment feature and closer integration of game and industry.

The Voice Contest is composed of two parts: team competition and wild season individual competition. The team competition will continue to be hosted by Zhejiang Institute of Media and Communications, and the wild season individual competition will be co-hosted by Shunxin Culture and Cat Ear FM. 

Shunxin Culture focuses on the search for good folk voices. Zhejiang Institute of Communication is a professional creator of good voices. Cat Ear FM is a 2D good voice vertical presentation platform. The three parties will cooperate and complement each other in this contest. Through exploring and cultivating 2D “new good voice”, they will open up the path between new practitioners and the market demand, so as to promote the all-round actor-based, idolized process of voice contest. Because of this objective, the wild season individual competition is specially planned in the form and schedule of competition. In addition to the regular mass selection, quarter-finals, semi-finals, it provides opportunities for truly strong players to have direct rise in ranking, turnaround and repechage, to make the whole contest more exciting. 

Authoritative “Golden Monkey King Award”

Attracts Oscar-nominated animated film The Breadwinner

As an important brand activity of CICAF, the "Golden Monkey King Award" aims to discover and reward excellent animation works and talents through evaluation, and let Chinese animations to go global. The "Golden Monkey King Award", an important event of CICAF, has works solicited all year round from animation companies, animation schools, independent producers at home and abroad, and evaluated periodically. To date, the organizer has received over 500 works to enter the competition, including The Breadwinner, produced by Irish renowned animation company Cartoon Saloon.

The Breadwinner is a co-production of Canada, Ireland and Luxembourg. The animated film won the Annie Award for Best Independent Animation Film, the top award in the global animation field. 

Meanwhile, the entries from Chinese and foreign well-known companies, colleges and institutions came in succession. They included Boonie Bears: The Big Shrink, which raked in 122 million yuan at the box office on the first day of release, and took in 589 million yuan at the box office to date. Duck Duck Goose, a family comedy animated film produced by Wanda Pictures and scheduled to screen on March 8, also joined in the contest for the Golden Monkey King Award.