In the right frame of mind after ant attack

About two years ago 26-year-old animation artist Guo Yuanyuan had a dream of dead ants attacking her. She woke up and realized that it was her urge to be more creative that was biting her.

Up till then, Guo had been working as chief animation designer at a production company in Shanghai.

"Most of my work was processing cartoon TV serials from abroad, a boring outsourcing job that left no place for creativity," Guo says.

According to Guo, because of cheap labor, an array of famous cartoon TV programs and animated films from Japan and the United States are actually finished in China. The process is a rigid one: adding content in a fixed frame, just like assembly line workers. Dissatisfied with this routine, Guo wanted to make her own animated films. So she resigned.

She then planned to produce an independent animated film, inspired by her dream of ants.

"The ants expressed the anxiety of people living in modern cities," she says.

Guo and her husband Peng Penghua, who is also an animation designer, established their own studio in 2006.

Beginning in March that year, Guo began working 5 hours a day for the next 14 months. From script design to dubbing, she had a hand in everything.

Every three months or so, she says, she would start feeling depressed and almost gave up. Once she lost everything she had done on her computer and cried the entire night. But every time she was down, her husband encouraged her to get back up again.

Last May, Guo finished an 8-minute animated video called The Ants. The story is about a young couple dealing with modern-day pressures, while ants appear toward the end of the film as a metaphor for the loss of individuality in a mechanized society.

The film eventually won international attention. At the Ottawa Animation Cartoon Festival in September, Guo received invitations from several other international film festivals.

In July, she won the best CG film at the Shanghai Independent Film Festival, which brought her not only a 10,000-yuan ($1,380) prize but also potential further investment.

English film studio Intelligent Alternative, which is making a series called What's in China Now? has commissioned Guo to make a short animated film. It will be distributed by the BBC, and will screen in cinemas throughout the UK.

Guo's favorite animated film is Hayao Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke. For her, Miyazaki is not just a great animator, but a great film director.

"A good animated film sometimes reflects the real world," says Guo.

Though the domestic animation industry is still largely undeveloped, Guo says there are many animators like her dreaming to be China's Miyazaki.

According to a 2007 report from Investment and Consultant China, there are 500 million potential animation consumers in China, that could fuel a booming industry producing related products like children's foods, toys and clothes, with expected annual profits of 100 billion yuan ($13.8 billion).

By the end of 2006, there were over 5,400 animation companies in China; 447 colleges offer animation design courses for 470,000 students.

"Maybe, in 10 years time, we might have a mature animation industry," Guo says. "China never lacks culture or talent, and we will certainly have our own animation masters and brands."

(China Daily 01/30/2008 page20)