Regardless of the outcome, the decision to animate the “three-body” itself is a brave attack on the future of the industry after the staged exploration of domestic animation.
Editor’s note: This article is from WeChat public account “Geek Park” (ID: geekpark), author Song Desheng.
Regardless of the outcome, the decision to animate the “three-body” itself is a brave attack on the future of the industry after the staged exploration of domestic animation.
On June 26, 2019, Station B announced the animated launch of the “Three-body” and released the first concept trailer. Overnight, the news detonated the social network. In the contradiction between questioning and expectation, fans once again saw the hope of the adaptation of the “Three-body” film and television.
Unexpectedly, the B station handed over the animation to an animation company that was founded only four years ago. Even at the scene of the Bilibili 10th Anniversary Celebration, the news of the “Three-body” animation was completely made. The square art painting was announced in the sky.
Founded at the peak of the investment boom in the domestic animation industry, the art painting was originally a small team of more than a dozen people. While the entire animation industry is gradually on the right track, this initially unobtrusive team has gradually gained the ability to assume the “China’s first science fiction IP” with the help of the market, capital, platform and audience.
In the four years since the opening of the art, the animation industry has experienced the spring breeze of capital, and has gone through the cold winter after the bubble burst. This is a difficult but complete exploration for people in the industry. Regardless of the outcome, the decision to animate the “three-body” itself is a brave attack on the future of the industry after the staged exploration of domestic animation.
B Station Tri-body Page | Screenshots
Required commitment
On the music platform, the soundtrack of “Magic Mirror Nordrine” is still there. Zhai Rui said that he sometimes drank some wine and lay in bed, he would turn it out and listen. He will be a little sad, and it still is like this.
Under the first score, the most commented message said: “The fate of the code slave (Nordelion protagonist) is still unknown, noThe fate of passing the country seems to have become clear.
Two years ago, the first episode of “Magic Mirror Nordrine” was launched. This domestic animation with more than 30 minutes of a single episode quickly gathered a group of fans. The number of online viewers at the B station was up to 70,000, and the Douban score exceeded 9 points. At that time, some people said that it would become a phenomenal work of Guo Man in 2017.
It’s too early to judge. “Magic Mirror Nordrine” is the same as the prequel work “Mad Hero”, which is based on the IP of Blizzard game. As long as the production of the art is still in use, it is always in the setting of Blizzard. There is a landmine with a blurred border.
There is more and more discussion, some people boast, and some people are jealous. Fans of art and painting are very emotional, and with the expectation of “the rise of the country”, they slammed into the fence of their works and stepped on the mine. Blizzard fans were completely irritated. Together with the passers-by who couldn’t get used to, they stood on the opposite side of the art.
There are keywords of “original”, “family” and “plagiarism”. There are many restrictions on the creation and realization of the works of the same person. In the cracks, the art has chosen to give up. On June 20, 2017, nearly 50 days after the first episode was launched, the art and paintings announced that they would stop infinitely “Magic Mirror Nordrine”.
It’s hard to leave a story and a character that has already been built. It’s the equivalent of saying goodbye to an old friend.” said Rui Rui, founder and CEO of Art Painting, who is not only the manager of the company. It is also the creator of “Magic Mirror Nordrine”. Before the stop, they wrote hundreds of thousands of words of text settings and chronicles, and painted hundreds of set-ups. In the plan, “Magic Mirror Nordrine” will use multi-threaded narrative like “Game of Thrones”. There will be at least three seasons of plot capacity in the future.
After announcing the stoppage, the art painting opened the first episode of “The Hero of Madness” and “Magic Mirror Nordell” in the whole network, and announced that the company will fully turn to the development of original IP. Some people say that this is a signal that art paintings have completely opened up and started again, but it is a very painful thing to open the past for both the individual and the whole team.
In order to appease the team, Zhai Rui communicated with many colleagues who were deeply involved in the project. “This is what the country’s growth has presented to us, a phased and inevitable undertaking.” He said, “Every company will encounter various obstacles on the unknown road of the country’s growth. This is our obstacle, everyone must bravely cross the past,Have this awareness.
For Ruirui, who has been working in the animation industry for more than a decade, the illusion of “Magic Mirror Nordrine” is not the first and the last one he crossed.
Tracks and Weeds
In 2001, Zhai Rui was admitted to the animation school just established by the Communication University of China and became the first student of animation related major in China’s 211 University. One year after enrolling, he and his friends set up a small studio to produce commercial animations based on commercials. Later, the studio improved, received investment, began to produce low-caliber cartoons, and also undertaken some outsourcing animations of film and television companies.
Recalling this period, Rui Rui called it the “1.0 era” of Chinese animation. After more than two decades of development stagnation, in 2000, the national policy began to support domestic animation, and gave a lot of help to animation companies in terms of taxation and subsidies. Many universities including Zhongchuan began to supply professionals for the animation industry. As the core broadcast channel of animation, TV stations also provide prime time resources for domestic animation.
Inspired by the policy, the output of animation has soared, but the quality is generally not high, and the category is mainly low-young animation. Some time ago, because of the broadcast of more than 5,000 episodes on the hot search “Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf”, it is the representative works of domestic animation in this period.
Behind the high-yield and low-quality animation, there are some industry problems. First of all, the animation broadcast channel is completely on the TV. There is a lack of communication between the creator and the viewer. If there is a problem with the content, the creator cannot get feedback in the first time. Secondly, the animation industry at that time did not have a sound business model and lacked a benign business cycle. The income and influence brought by the works were difficult to quantify. This also made it difficult for entrepreneurs to seek investment from outside. “The road to entrepreneurship is not a track, all It is weeds that cannot go forward.”
The most important thing is that the market environment is very demanding for creators. At that time, the main feature of low-school animation was “short-time intensive output”, which required “hundreds of thousands of minutes” of content to be produced every year, and the quality was difficult to guarantee. In addition, in terms of income, the animation company’s income comes from the sideline of state subsidies and cultural real estate, and there is no positive competition. “It’s very painful, there is no income, and I will go to the film with one brain.”
阮瑞 | Artwork Open Day
In 2011, after several years of rapid growth, the total production time of domestic TV cartoons reached 261,000 minutes, ranking first in the world. Also in this year, Rui Rui recognized the current limitations of the animation industry and chose to leave the animation studio for nine years.
When the farewell to the animation industry, it is the beginning of the mobile Internet entrepreneurial boom. Under the influence of the big environment, Ruirui, who has low-experience animation production experience, has made a parenting Internet product with friends, thus joining the mobile Internet.
A few years ago, Rui Rui almost touched the Internet industry from scratch, and began to learn Internet skills such as traffic data analysis and operation from the bottom. However, the groping during this time allowed him to find a solution to the animation industry problem.
Only options
“At the time, the online video platform just got up and felt like entering a new era.” Rui Rui said that the video site allows creators to directly contact the audience and communicate more smoothly. More importantly, unlike the unbalanced competition during the broadcast period on the TV platform, the on-demand Internet video platform is “full market economy”. “It’s not good to see the future direction of your product or company.”
In addition, the Internet channel provides a quantifiable traffic system for the work. “On-demand, comment, interactive, coin-operated, like, and barrage can be quantified and can have an expected conversion.” Quantitative data represents real income, and for the capital side, investment also has a digital and modeled approach.
“The pattern is clearer,” the early capital, mid-term product and operations, and later announcements and sales have shown a rationalization trend at this time.
A few typical success stories have emerged in the industry. Based on the World of Warcraft IP-based fan animation “My name is MT”, after being adapted into a mobile game, the company has reached the top for two consecutive years and achieved profitability. The network funny animation “100,000 cold jokes” also had considerable popularity at the time. On the other hand, Disney’s Marvel movie universe entered the second stage, and the systemic IP derivative model became more and more mature.
Capital began to pay attention to the animation industry. At this time, Ruirui just finished the entrepreneurial project of childcare products and is studying at Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business. Intensive investors and entrepreneurs around him made him capture this wave of capital for the first time.
In the summer of 2015, the success of “The Return of the Great” completely ignited the investment boom for the animation industry. Zhai Rui seized the opportunity, together with the producer Chen Wei and director Dong Xiangbo, set up an art painting and opened a successful investment of 5 million yuan.
Arts and Paintings Core Team | Artwork Open Day<