Animators urged to do more for Chinese box office

While Chinese cinemas are achieving record sales, very few of the top scorers are animation titles.

In 2015, the country's box-office takings touched 44.1 billion yuan ($7 billion), up 48 percent year-on-year. But the nearly 60 domestic animation films contributed only 4.5 percent to that amount, with Monkey King: Hero Is Back, adapted from the Chinese literary classic Journey to the West, making the most money.

It has been 90 years since the first Chinese animation film was released. The black-and-white Uproar in the Studio is said to have been made by two brothers in Shanghai.