Chengja He presents us the studio "Snow Leopard October Digital Animation" (''10SLO Digital Animation''), creates in 2004, and based in Wuxi, in the province of Jiangsu in China. Their last production, "Space Hero", is an animated serie produced for television including 26 episodes. A fulllength movie is also in development.
Chengja He directed "Space Hero" and he is "10SLO Digital Animation'' studio co-founder. This TV serie is intended for a young 8-13 year old public but he reveals us that the new full-length film from "10SLO Digital Animation" studios will be produced for an older, more adolescent and adult public.
"Space Hero" mobilized approximately 200 persons, divided up in various departments. The story is about aliens, subject which has a lot of success with the young public in China. The studio used 3D techniques to produce some high definition pictures to touch an international public.
The series tells the history of an alien which gets lost and lands on Earth. Through human contact, he is transformed into blue little boy who grows with human beings and begins to feel human feelings. 10 years later his own people will mean taking revenge and trying to reconquer the earth. The young alien wil try to convince his own people to communicate with humans. Chengja He wanted to give a peaceful message, by investigating the relation between humans and aliens without presenting them as miserable but rather as beings which want to protect their people.
"10SLO Digital Animation Studios" invested and produced "Space Hero" by themselves. There are generally few coproductions in China, or then it is about subcontracting with western studios. "Most of the time, Chinese productions are self produced " declares Chengja He. He would like to have more partnerships with French companies but he notices that few companies need coproductions with the Chinese market. Collaborations still limit themselves to subcontracting, even if he would prefer to work on coproductions.
Space Hero characters have asian designs, and he thinks that it creates a gap with the French studios. He adds that Canadian studios admitted that the visual impact created by asian characters is still not well accepted by the young public. TV channels broadcasting for a young public prefer to show more western persons.
Most of the time traditionals softwares as Maya, or 3DSMAX, are used in China to produce cartoon movies, but from time to time certain partnerships with Chinese companies allow them to develop plugins or Chinese softwares to improve pictures or accelerate production.
Cinema has more success than cartoon movies in China, but the actual young public consumes more and more animation. The 10 to 20 years old young people from generations born after the 90s, take advantage of the considerable increase of their parent's purchasing power, which allows them to dedicate more budget to this type of cinema, to buy DVDs or other by-products. Animation market has increased a lot these last years.
It is the first year Chengja He comes to Annecy, where he was able to meet people who entertain the same passion as him. Taken out of the Chinese public university in 1991, he started his career at "Far Eastern". The Taiwanese studio is the main Japanese animation studios subcontractor, which also collaborated with ''Studios Pierrot'' on "Naruto" series.
As animator, he worked in 1991 on a first production, an animation saga called " The God of the sea " ("Hai Shen"). He pursued his way at "Wang Films Productions" ("Hong Guang") one of the most prolific Taiwanese animation studio, that became the main subcontractor dealing with Disney Studios. As director at " 10SLO Digital Animation ", Chengja He feels more at ease to produce domestic films with funny and good-looking characters or science fiction movies.
"Space Hero" was not presented at Annecy's competition. "10SLO Digital Animation" came to understand how works the European market and to find distributors. During these two days on the Annecy movie market (MIFA), numerous German, Canadian or French companies made distributions proposals for the European market. "10SLO Digital Animation" will probably be back next year to Annecy to present its new full-length animated movie.
Alain Andrieux
