Animation industry still has room for growth

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the world's first animation film, was released in 1937. Four years later, the Wan Brothers screened the first Chinese animation feature, Princess Iron Fan, a fictional character from the Chinese classic Journey to the West. Princess Iron Fan, which highlighted the Chinese style of animation, laid the foundation for China's animation industry.

The pursuit of Chinese style of animation led to the creation of The Monkey King in 1964, a classic animation film well known both at home and abroad. The broad reach and mass appeal of Chinese animations can be gauged from the fact that even Osamu Tezuka, the godfather of manga (the Japanese term for impromptu pictures), was inspired by the works of the Wan Brothers such as Princess Iron Fan and The Monkey King. In fact, during reconstruction of postwar Japan, China's animation style offered a cultural reference to Japanese artists.

The biggest achievement of the generation represented by the Wan Brothers, Te Wei and Ma Kexuan, in the mid-20th century was the successful adoption of the basic Western rule of picture composition and using it to create Chinese-style animations. Especially, ink-wash animations such as Where is Mama (1960), The Cowboy's Flute (1963) and Feeling from Mountain and Water (1988) gave shape to the Chinese style of animation.