The 2nd XTalents Conference Bring More Opportunities for Chinese Animation & Cartoon Talents in 2016 CICAF

Experts from home and abroad expressed increasing confidence in the future of China’s cartoon and animation industry during the 12th China International Cartoon and Animation Festival (CICAF), which from April 27th to May 2nd. On April 30, 2016, as the final professional activity for the 12th CICAF, XTalents Conference On International Cartoon & Animation Talents Exchange was successfully held at the White Horse Lake Jianguo Hotel.

The conference theme is N.E.X.T.– International Cartoon & Animation Talents Development Trends and Future. It was divided into three major sections, namely the International Animation Talent Development Symposium, Portfolio Review & Job Fairs, Matching Session of Supply and Demand. Animation and art professional scholars from well-known domestic and foreign design universities, representatives of institutions, academic leaders and well-known animation companies’ managers and human resource executives were gather together to discuss the training mechanism and the development trend and future of cartoon & animation talents.

During the Symposium, there were six guest speakers address keynote speeches to the audience. They are Chris Williams, the head of National Center for Computer Animation (NCCA) from Bournemouth University (BU); Guanglei Jia, shoot supervisor and China business supervisor from Double Negative Visual Effects (Dneg.); Steven Brown, associate director of character animation from California Institute of the Arts (Calarts); Jeffrey Reingold, licensed publishing manager from Marvel Comics; Naryana Kumar, managing director from Rainbow and Vincent Chua, production recruitment manager from Oriental DreamWorks Shanghai office.

At the very beginning, Mr. Bao Jie, the curator of XTalents and executive secretary of International Education Alliance for Creative Industries (IEACI), Greater China area, shared the idea of what XTalnets means. “X means cross-border, we believe all the talents in creative industries will need the cross-border abilities and they do have the potential. Also, education is the starting point of the industry, and it is important to tell colleges what the industry needs and requires, also it is important to know how does the top universities train their animation and cartoon talents”.

After that, Chris brought several short animation films which made by his students from NCCA. The started short film was made by three students from three different countries, it showing the diversity of the university and the industry nowadays. In the rest of his talk, he told about the NCCA, about the university’s relationship with the industries which the graduates worked in. Also, he shared a fantastic thought about Global Education for a Global Industry.

“We are in need of a large amount of talents who make visual special effects, but in China, unfortunately, there is no major related to special effects, that’s why we would love to cooperate with Chinese companies and universities to fix the gap.” said Jia Guanglei from Dneg., which is the company just won the Oscar for the best VFX award this year by the movie Ex Machina. His topic is about New Model/Platform of Jointly Cultivating VFX Artists, and he described the talents training system of Dneg. and welcomed for more cooperation.

Steven shared his idea about Career and Talent Development for Students of Animation and summarized the talents developing in Calarts, also mentioned few famous directors who are graduated from Calarts. For example, Mark Osborne, the director of Kung Fu Panda 1 and The Little Prince. “I feel very encouraged by recent Chinese animations,” said Steven, who is also the guest professor at Beijing Film Academy, “Feature film should not be part of commercial marketing, it should represent a director’s vision.”

Jeff brought an exciting news from Marvel’s Art, it is about local talent for a global market, which means Chinese artists may have the chance to draw for Marvel. Also, Jeff showed the exciting trailer about Marvel’s latest movie Captain America 3: Civil War to the audience. As one of the famous comic company in the world, Marvel created lots of popular characters and there may have more Chinese hero’s join in the Marvel’s Universe in the future.

The last two speakers, Naryana Kumar shared the successful experience from the The Rainbow Academy and discussed about how to become a world class animator and Vincent talked about the talents requirements of Oriental DreamWorks. “We look for those willing to learn, with strong passion for animation, and the necessary skills to work in our team,” said Chua.

In the afternoon, there were more than fifty companies including Zoland, Sparkly Key Animation Studio, Versatile, Ayou Culture, Fanfan Animation, Steam Works Culture, Electronic Soul, NetEase Technology, Feeling Touch Games etc. attended the job fair and representative from Maryland Institute College of Art, Chris from BU, Steven from Calarts and the other guest speakers from universities in the morning also jointed the portfolio review. Many high school students and graduates attended the job fair and portfolio review event, they got quite a lot valuable information from the professors and company representatives.

During the evening match session, besides the guest speakers, the attendees also included course leaders from Chinese universities and managers from animation and game companies. One of the Chinese educators said that less than half of their students work in the industry after graduation. Some even put the number at 10 percent. For prestigious schools like BU, the figure is 85 percent, and that of Calarts is 95 percent. Therefore, they were discussed how can improve Chinese talents training system and the industry by learning from the successful experience from overseas universities and companies.

For the whole CICAF festival, more than 5,000 professionals and exhibitors from 80 countries and regions participated in the 12th festival. In total, the festival welcomed more than 1.3 million guests, while contracts of almost 13 billion yuan (US$2 billion) were signed. The Chinese animation & cartoon industry just like what Mr. Steven Brown said “Everything is on a good track, it just takes a certain amount of time”.