Things are looking UP in the Chinese animation market. Just ask Trevor Lai, whose Shanghai-based UP Studios is on the fast track to producing original family animation. Lai plans to bring to the U.S. and hey, while he’s at it, the world. Lai describes UP as “a combination of Silicon Valley and Pixar,” developing movies, TV series and even books, but also quicker-to-market apps like its first hit, BOOMiGram, which enables users to layer emoticons over video. The app already piqued the interest of Apple, which featured it in a cross-China tour of flagship stores. “We’re working on longer-term projects, but we can also create products that can hit the market quickly like Silicon Valley does… and iterate, iterate, iterate,” he tells CynKids. Here’s what else is on Lai’s mind.
Shifting dynamics in Chinese animation
The industry used to be driven by production and was bustling with work on shows the U.S. and Europe would send over. You’d see an entirely Chinese team animate an entirely French cartoon. Now, for the first time, we’re seeing a drive toward a real domestic industry, and it’s been [driven] by costs. The salaries of employees across the board have double and tripled. Production work has shifted to other markets. Thailand, Vietnam and India have competitive outsourcing and the industry here shrank. We started to notice a lot of production houses becoming IP studios. Back in 2008 there was a lot of Kung Fu stuff–Kung Fu Rabbit, Kung Fu Squirrel, because of the success of Kung Fu Panda. If Transformers are hot, you see a ton of transforming cars. It made me say, what is this market going to need going forward as the audience becomes more sophisticated?
The Secret to creating hit global properties
A lot of it comes down to storytelling. There are a lot of shows that have been done for the domestic [Chinese] market—a lot of morality tales–that don’t travel well. They don’t really take the viewer on a journey or cause them to imagine.
So, Oriental DreamWorks–good or bad for UP?
As a fan, it’s really exciting. From a business standpoint, you have to be aware of these giants coming in and taking up significant market share and working with the most powerful domestic partners with access to sales networks that a startup studio wouldn’t have. So we definitely have to contend with that. At the same time, they have an existing model and legacy properties that are already established. If you think about it, Pixar was not the first animation studio to come around. Technology had a huge part to do with how they were able to stand out in the marketplace. When Toy Story came out, the press was about how the storytelling was unique. At the time, Disney already had a business model, the market was mature, but there was an opening at the rim for an original upstart. We have a unique niche. We’re completely homegrown, with original characters and stories.
The BOOMiGram boom
It’s Instagram meets Disney, where you can take a video and add CG animation on top. We created an app and within six months we approached Apple in China and basically they said, “If you can make it, we’d love to support it.” Two months later, I was presenting in Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai. In China, we have the opportunity to start exploring the characters. We can change and iterate BOOMiGram; even within the past year we’ve redesigned it three, four and five times based on [feedback] from the Apple Store, based on school tours here.
Momentum with U.S. broadcasters
Our concepts are attracting a lot of interest and with our ability to scale up to demand, the number of conversations with U.S. broadcasters has increased a lot. The No. 1 question is, “When can you deliver 54 episodes, 104 episodes?” The orders in China are much larger than in North America, that’s been the trend.