Kung Fu Panda was certainly Hollywood's animated movie of the year, a huge box office success around the world. The film is laden with many symbolic elements of Chinese culture. But the success story was a harsh lesson for Chinese animators, who strive but have never achieved such success for Chinese animation.
With this is mind, an international animation forum titled "Kung Fu Panda and Chinese Comics" has opened in Beijing.
The forum brings Jed Diffenderfer, the story artist for Kung Fu Panda and Dalton Grant, the story artist behind Cars and Shrek 2, together with prominent Chinese animators.
They discussed how to increase the competitiveness of Chinese animation, how to learn from countries with advanced animation industries, and tapping into China's rich culture to create a homegrown cartoon phenomenon.
Po the panda may be an unlikely hero, but he fought his way into the hearts of global film viewers. The much-hyped movie brought in up to 180 million yuan, or about 26 million US dollars, at the Chinese box office, the highest ever total for an animated movie.
Surprisingly, Kung Fu Panda creator Jed Diffenderfer had never even been to China when he plotted the story.
The forum was organized by the Beijing Publishing House Group, also launching its Beijing Comic Public Service Platform. The platform includes a comic creation center and a professional cartoon website.
The building of the platform will be based on cartoon magazine "Beijing Comic". The professional magazine has nurtured a group of young cartoon artists since its establishment in 1995.
