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Guoman’s own profitability is weak, and the platform that was previously maintained by burning money gradually burned.

Oral | Special Observer Xiang Weihao

Edit | Cui Mindong, Bai Mengshi

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Core tips:

1. After October 2018, the wind of the entire industry suddenly changed, and it began to thunder. Guo Man has entered a very difficult period. Works that have already been signed will not be signed, and the platform will start to wait and see.

2. The market has changed, but it will leave some people who really want to create. “Crowding bubbles” is not all bad.

3. The director must consider the storyboard and how the content is expressed. The same is true of the main writer. The storyboarding sense must be good. It must be considered very comprehensively, so the requirements for talent training are very high.

During the epidemic, one of the cartoons that impressed me most was Academician Zhong Nanshan standing in the middle, with Vulcan Mountain on the left and Lei Shengshan on the right. That cartoon was drawn by a personal author, and the traffic on Weibo was very high. The art form of comics was very effective during the outbreak.

Quick view, Xiaoming Taiji and the two platforms that I cooperate with suggest that during the epidemic, the contracted authors can draw more public welfare cartoons to fight the epidemic, and the platform will focus on promotion to popularize relevant protection knowledge to readers. In response to the call, our studio drew a comic about not eating wild animals.

Picture: Doudou Dragon’s cartoon works, provided by special observers

The impact of the epidemic on comics creation is minimal. The process of comics is relatively simple: the screenwriter produces the script, the main strokes are divided into lines, the lines are drawn, and the colors are painted. Like our studio, as long as there are three or four people in one work, 60 works can be made in a week, and comics can be created online.

But the platform is affected a lot. The platform requires a lot of editorial collaboration, because of the impact of the epidemic, they can only work from home, and the work efficiency will naturally decrease. For example, we have passed the cartoon review, and we need to hold a review meeting. Each editor must present his draft contract with the studio. Let’s discuss it together, carefully review all the drafts, and then decide what works to sign. The platform is very cautious about choosing works. But now, editors can only meet online, which greatly affects work efficiency. There will be problems in the extension of our circle: the date of the review meeting cannot be set, the platform cannot sign new works, and the studio must be affected. Originally, our studio has already made several works before the Spring Festival The outline can only be postponed now, but it must be temporary.

I started doing comics in 2017. At that time, everyone was very optimistic about the comics industry, because it was very easy to draft.

How easy is it? At that time, including Tencent Animation, Quick Watch, Xiaoming Taiji, and some well-known comic platforms were lacking. To what extent is it missing? I contributed to a platform, and wrote about 500 characters of a comic outline. I could write it in the afternoon. If the other party can still read it, they can use it. At that time, those artists were recruited from my fresh graduates. The level of painting was not high, and I had no experience in drawing sub-mirrors. Before I joined the company, I didn’t even do the assistants, but the manuscripts still passed the platform review.

Many fast-money comic companies basically joined the industry from 2015-2017, because the industry market was good during this period. I was particularly impressed. At the end of 2017, I went to participate in the annual meeting of Tencent Animation. At that time in Hangzhou, Tencent Animation invited hundreds of painters on the industry’s internal platform. The theme is still fresh. “Next year, we must make everyone more money.

But after October 2018, the wind of the entire industry suddenly changed and it began to thunder.

At that time, I received a call from a platform editor saying that he would cut the work. Their internal focus should be tilted towards paid comics, and they should be explosive. Generally, the works should be cut. Since then, other platforms have begun to follow up. After that, Guoman entered a very difficult period. The works that had been negotiated for the contract would not be signed, and the platform began to wait and see. The reviewers put forward very high requirements for the style of the work, the quality of the script, and the creativity, and they did not pass so well. Therefore, companies without core competitiveness at this time will not be able to mix this industry. It is not an exaggeration to say that Guoman Studio will be half less in 2019.

The reason for this change is that Guoman itself has a weak profitability. The platform that was previously maintained by burning money gradually burned.

The profit of comics depends on paid comics, but readers are used to watching free comics, and the conversion rate of paid comics is particularly low. According to my own observations, a comic is updated twice a week with 30 frames each time, so updating 60 frames a week will update about 240 frames a month. The domestic comic book contract price is basically the platform paid to the studio’s draft fee, which is about 100 yuan per comic, so the monthly manuscript fee is about 24,000 yuan.

But how much profit can your comic bring to the platform? According to experience, if the collection of comics is only tens of thousands, it can only bring about 1,000 yuan of paid income to the platform, among which the studio will have to pay 50%. Therefore, the platform paid 24,000 yuan a month for the manuscript fee, only 500 yuan can be recovered. It is really a loss and a very expensive one. It can only be hoped that the explosion of comics.

In the past few years, there are some people who are optimistic about the market. He is willing to burn money. Later, he always burns money without returning it. It is like sharing a bicycle. , The same reason. In fact, this is also good, the market has changed, but some people who really want to engage in creative work will be left. “Crowding bubbles” is not all bad.

The division of labor in the comics industry is similar to that of the film and television industry. It is a cultural and creative product. However, the comic itself is not very profitable. The platform can only do explosive works, and then sell copyrights and explosive works in order to have more benefits.

Creating explosive comics, I think domestic practitioners should learn from South Korea. Korean comics, especially web comics, are the world’s leading standards. When ordinary people talk about manga, they think more of Japanese manga. The habit of Japanese manga is black and white manga, and there is some disconnection between color diffuse and mobile phone strip.

Caiman in South Korea is doing well for two reasons.

First of all, Korea ’s Caiman has been around for more than ten years. The training of talents has taken shape. For example, Korean artists have done a great job in splitting and coloring, and the picture looks very comfortable. . In fact, comics are not an easy task. Being the main author is no different from being a director. The director must consider the split lens and how the content is expressed, so is the main writer. The split lens feeling must be good, and it must be considered very comprehensively, so the requirements for talent training are very high.

The second point is story quality. Basically, there are about 10 TV series of Korean TV stations adapted each year through comics. For example, the popular Korean drama “Why Secretary Kim is like this” in 2018 was originally a comic. China also has manga-changed TV series, but they are all small-produced web dramas. The script is of high quality, and the pay rate of Korean comics is naturally much stronger than that of domestic comics.

Korean comics have various themes. In contrast, Guo Man’s biggest problem is that homogenization is particularly serious. The domestic platforms are all “Mary Su”, or cross, harem, the theme is particularly single. However, with the maturity of the mobile Internet, new comic forms have emerged, which may inspire new opportunities, such as dynamic comics.

Dynamic comics have been born in China for less than 4 years. Dynamic manga is a new form of expression that combines flat manga and dynamic elements. Usually, a certain action processing is added to the static manga to enable characters to make simple expressions and movements. At the same time, dialogues, background music, and sound effects are added to form animation-like characters. effect. Dynamic manga is an intermediate form between manga and animation. It is relatively new, like B station, iQiyi, Youku have dynamic manga.

At present, domestic animation production is relatively immature, with high production costs and long production cycles. The emergence of dynamic comics has deeply digged the derived value of comic works, and has accelerated the incubation and realization of cash through platform account-sharing. It has also reduced core users while reducing Blindly expanding the risk of investing in adaptations of animation or web dramas. This will be a new development opportunity for Guoman, but in my opinion, Dynamic Manga is still in the experimental stage. How much money can Dynamic Manga make successfully? I haven’t seen some relevant data.

In fact, creators and platforms also have their own helplessness. In order to survive, they can only cater to the reader’s requirements. However, the age of the readers of online comics is relatively small, generally junior high school students and elementary school students. According to the saying of the online text industry, the readers of online comics are basically “little white” and there is no “old white”.

To attract adults to love comics, you have to start with the content and have a good script. The Chinese have a strong ability to compose stories. Like online literature, they have already rushed out of Asia and into the world. In the world of web literature, everyone can play freely, but in the comics industry, because its threshold is relatively high, it can’t write anything like an internet novel, and it also needs to consider the presentation form of the content, so fewer people create it. Now that Guoman has just started, it will develop for a few more years.Only the quality of books can reach a certain level. Of course, industry-related industry cooperation is also required. I believe that our market will be much larger than it is now.