For years the lead characters in many American and Japanese cartoons have been winning the hearts of Taiwanese people. Now many Chinese-speaking Internet users are turning their affections to two newcomers, A-kuei and G.G. Long. An old-timer, Master Q, may be next.
A-kuei is a cute, ever-curious fourth grader living in the cybertown of Springfall. He is just another energetic ten-year-old whose scope of life is confined to family, school, and neighborhood. Though A-kuei sometimes is naughty, he always remembers to be polite and refrain from cursing. G. G. Long, another resident of cyberspace, is a rock vocalist who stands out from the other band members due to his sinister appearance and raspy voice. A closer look reveals that he is not human at all, but a chameleon. This creature uses impassioned, at times abusive, language as sharp as his pointy face, but to many Internet users he is just as adorable as A-kuei. Despite the great differences between them, both these two characters have achieved fame in Taiwan and are starting to attract numerous followers across the Taiwan Strait and internationally as well.
Their presence is even being extended into the real world. Created in September 1999, A-kuei recently also began appearing in TV commercials and on CDs, and an A-kuei theme restaurant, located on the trendy east side of Taipei, has been attracting both hard-core fans and curiosity seekers. A cartoon series has reached the TV screen, and the two A-kuei comic books published so far have each sold more than 100,000 copies. And G.G. Long--whose name was derived from an off-color Taiwanese dialect expression--has not lagged far behind in exposure. After appearing on the scene in September 2000, he immediately became the adopted alter ego for many people in Taiwan. He released his first CD in May this year, and has become a commercial icon as the mouthpiece for various well-known brands, including Nike. The distributors of a new line of G.G. Long stuffed toys talk confidently of acquiring a hefty market share.
Two very young companies, Spring House Entertainment and CH1 Internet Co., are the forces behind this unexpected domestic boom in cyber cartooning. "Their rich content, lively images, and innovative marketing show the strong capability of their creative teams," says Brian Chien, manager of the Taipei Youth Activity Center's information department. The triumphs of the two companies stand in sharp contrast to the decline of many "dot com" operations that not long ago enjoyed dreams of big riches. The celebrity status and financial success of A-kuei and G.G. Long have lured others to electronic cartooning in expectation of similar profits. Most of those who tried to follow their example have already dropped by the wayside, though a few persistent ones are dragging on, testing their luck.
One that may fare better is the cyber version, due out at the end of this year, of a Chinese-speaking cartoon legend: Master Q, also known as Lao Fu Zhi. He has been successfully entertaining people for nearly forty years through books, syndicated comic strips, and movies. Originally created in Hong Kong by Alphonso Wong, Master Q and his friends, Spudz (Big Potato) and Mr. Chin, are looking for young audiences under the management of Wang Z Marketing Inc. in Taipei. "The Internet is too powerful to be overlooked if Master Q is to hook up with the younger generation," notes Chiu Shiu-tang, chairperson of Wang Z.
The entry of new rivals is welcomed by CH1 Internet's president Johnson Chiang. "Competition doesn't necessarily constitute a threat," Chiang says. "In fact, being a monopoly can only hurt an emerging business. As the Taiwanese idiom goes, 'Crowding together makes for better business.' We don't spend time wondering how others are doing. What's crucial is to set ourselves apart by creating material that speaks to the particular nature of our times." That outlook resembles the philosophy of Micho Chang, chief executive officer of Spring House. "Sailing through smooth waters may be more pleasant for a business, but meeting challenges makes a business stronger and better able to endure," Chang says.
The current economic slowdown nevertheless presents some new challenges. More and more enterprises are paring their advertising budgets, which means fewer commercial films for cartoon characters to star in. Retail sales, a major source of revenue for the electronic cartoon industry through licensing fees, are also decreasing. Any hope for a quick uptick in the economy has been pushed aside by successive typhoon-related disasters in Taiwan and the impact of the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States. But amid the gloomy projections, Chang tries to look at the bright side. Irrational investors are disappearing from the scene, allowing dedicated professionals to do their jobs with less interference. "What we're doing requires time and concentration for brewing commercial opportunities," Chang says. "There's no quick money --not these days."
Chang had been in the entertainment industry for more than twenty years before he started making Internet cartoons. He directed many MTV videos, commercials, and sitcoms and other TV shows. Some of his programs were prime-time hits, and the last sitcom, finished three years ago but only aired early this year, won him a nomination for best director at the 2001 Golden Bell Awards. He attributes the nomination to the innovative special effects he created with digital techniques generally used in filmmaking rather than television. This particular program also made possible the turning point in Chang's career that took him into cyber cartooning--not because of the acclaim it brought him but because getting the assignment caused him to drop plans to emigrate to Canada.
He had been ready to abandon his profession as well as residency in Taiwan after realizing that all the years of career success had failed to satisfy his growing desire for a "pure form" of personal expression. "I mean 'pure' in the sense of least outside interference," Chang says. "What I did before was the compromising required for teamwork. Most of the time I felt like I was churning out commodities according to the specifications set by the TV stations, producers, and scriptwriters. Film production can be fun and expressive, but it doesn't seem to have a bright future in Taiwan. Now with the Internet and 3D animation techniques, I see infinite possibilities open to me." The idea of making online cartoons did not cross Chang's mind until his production equipment was idled after his sitcom project ended. Already proficient in 3D animation and digital editing, Chang decided to use his skills and studio to venture into a new area of the entertainment industry.
Choosing cartoon characters to speak for him released Chang from such complications as dealing with casting, ratings, agents, and actors' tempers. He embarked on his new enterprise in July 1999 by hiring two young men proficient in computer programming and renting space on a virtual server for them to work on. "Online techniques make cartooning much more cost-effective than before," Chang notes. "In the old days, a director had to have a well-thought-out plan, detailed storyboard, and complete 'rough' ready before the cartoonists even came in. The whole process was extremely time-consuming and the outcome unpredictable. If anything went wrong, you'd have to start all over again. Today anyone can draw cartoons with software tools such as Flash, Freehand, Cordraw, and Photoshop. By the time we started making online movies, we were equipped with all the available software for 3D animation."
Those tools may be handy, but it is how they are used that makes the difference. Chang and his team needed a powerful story with infinite potential for development. Aware that creative works often gain the most public appreciation when they stem from reality, Chang put his memory into "rewind" mode through some thirty years of his life until he re-encountered his ten-year-old self. After a further process of refinement, the result was A-kuei, designed to fill viewers with nostalgia for the good old days of childhood. The first A-kuei comic strip was posted on the Net the day before the massive earthquake of September 21, 1999, struck the island, setting off a power failure that disconnected the site from the Internet for two weeks. Chang's team kept on preparing comics with caring messages aimed at those who were suffering in the aftermath of the quake.
"We didn't have a clue about how many people were out there reading A-kuei until we put in a bulletin board and a counter in November," Chang recalls. "It all happened very fast. Advertising agencies started knocking on our door, and many 'netizens' began to mimic A-kuei's speaking style and tone of voice. We didn't know where the audience came from, and were amazed to learn just how big it had become in such a short time. And we had the sense that everyone [in the entertainment industry] was watching us, because few people at that time knew how the digital model for online cartoons would work."
As A-kuei gained popularity and the company expanded, Chang and his team, now grown to eighty people, have reflected on what viewers see in A-kuei and how the answer to that question could help create new business opportunities. "The timing was great," Chang reasons. "We were lucky to be the first, and we picked the right guy. The subject matter is actually about love, tolerance, empathy, and filial piety, but it's centered around a child any Taiwanese can identify with. Those who applaud A-kuei's positive image are really showing how much they cherish this place and those enduring values." The A-kuei phenomenon is also spurred by people's increased desire to reminiscence about the old days, now that bad times are casting doubt on future prospects.
While Micho Chang and his team are constructing a village life on the web that preaches the virtues of simplicity, Johnson Chiang and his crew are making online musicals to sing away people's gloom. "G.G. Long is straightforward and sarcastic," Chiang says. "He may or may not be right about the issues under discussion, but he vocalizes the underlying thoughts and feelings kept submerged by our sophistication." Chiang likes to tell how G.G. Long emerged from a humble beginning to take over center stage. Originally he was conceived as just one of the band members, playing piano in the background, and was picked for stardom when no other performer looked wicked, daring, and cranky enough to match the hoarse, angry voice dubbed into the musical. "The moment G.G. Long stepped out and opened his mouth, we knew he was the one," Chiang says. "It's funny to realize that we can't simply assign personalities to these characters. They are who they are, as much as we are who we are."
The thirty people in the production crew serve in rotation on the creative team, and when it is their turn they say they can feel themselves turning into G.G. Long in the way they think and speak. That forcefulness of the character has encouraged the company to aim at building him into an internationally recognized entertainment brand name. G.G. Long was therefore devised as "a global citizen" with no identifiable nationality, just as he has no fixed hair or skin color as befits his nature as a chameleon. This global identity, his creators hope, could eventually carry him into a larger arena to take his place with such cartoon superstars as Mickey, Snoopy, or the gang from South Park. CH1 Internet is looking forward to the prospect of contending against the big names in the business. Taiwan has long been one of the largest cartoon subcontract workshops in the world, producing animation for many of the leading American and Japanese companies. CH1 Internet's Taiwan base puts it in a favorable position to utilize the techniques the local industry has developed and the business connections it has established.
In a prospectus prepared for potential new investors, Chiang targets Chinese-speaking markets as the foothold needed for eventually breaking into the more lucrative Japanese and US markets. "Cultural distinctiveness is considered an edge in that regard," he stresses. "We need to give foreigners what they don't commonly find within their own cultural settings. G.G. Long therefore will not speak any language other than Chinese and Taiwanese. In addition, music will continue to be a principal element in our cartoons because that's an area in which Taiwan excels compared with other countries in the region." Chiang notes that the broad popularity of the Oscar-winning Chinese-language film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon has already signaled a new worldwide interest in Asia. The chance has arrived for Asian countries to present their cultural assets to international audiences.
The growing economic power of mainland China is also a major factor contributing to this trend, Chiang says. But despite the vast potential of the mainland market, Chiang is reluctant to do business there because of the rampant pirating of intellectual property. CH1 Internet currently has other priorities anyway. In the Taiwan market, G.G. Long so far this year has outperformed both Snoopy and Mickey in sales revenue. And he has made his debut as a political and social commentator on cable TV, appearing four times a day on weekdays. But some difficult challenges still lie ahead. One will be enhancing CH1 Internet's financial capability to enable the company to meet its development goals. Another is how to break down regional barriers so that its cartoons more readily gain acceptance in the global entertainment marketplace.
"Television will play an indispensable role in popularizing our cartoons at the international level," Chiang says. "The Internet is a powerful tool, but it is still limited considering that the estimated number of Internet users is only about 30 to 40 percent of the population in Taiwan and some other places in Asia. And we don't know how many people in this group visit our website regularly." It costs at least NT$50 million to $60 million (US$1.45 million to $1.74 million) to produce a thirteen-episode season of TV cartoons, each twenty-two minutes long. CH1 Internet will have to find outside financial support to back the plan.
"It may seem like an expensive investment at first," Chiang says. "But we should look at the product's peripheral benefits, such as copyright income, broadcast rights, DVDs, VCDs, toy sales, and sales of other licensed products. Take the Japanese-born Piccachu as an example. It generates yearly income of US$200 million to $300 million in America. South Park, an American production, has garnered US$2 billion from its overseas broadcasts." Chiang has made contact with several business groups about financial cooperation, but he anticipates that progress may be affected by the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. For the time being, Chiang is focusing on developing three major sources of income: commercials, licensing, and multi-media products such as CDs, mobile phone imaging, DVDs, and cartoon production.
Though its orientation is quite different from that of CH1 Internet, Spring House has also made progress toward entering overseas markets. A branch office in Japan handles promotional activities and licensing, and it has established retail channels in four major cities in mainland China. The company has also spent large sums to copyright the images of A-kuei and his family members in Taiwan, Japan, America, and mainland China. Apart from the financial input from commercials, licensed products, CDs, and the A-kuei restaurant, Spring House enjoys additional revenue from publishing, cooperative projects making cartoons with Japanese partners, and its cutting-edge production of cyber films. The latest cyber movie release, aimed at Chinese-speaking markets, is The Accidental Spy , a joint venture with Hong Kong's Golden Harvest film company. The film serves as the preview and online edition of a big-screen movie with the same title, starring Jackie Chan. Film-related products will be marketed in the near future, adding yet another source of income for the company. Chang also plans to install a pay-per-view function for future Internet film productions.
Chang sees great potential for cyber-film production and its by-products. "Online movies can be an effective way of promoting theater films," he says. "With broadband service we can develop even more sophisticated and high-quality audio-visual products." Both Spring House and CH1 Internet are working with major domestic broadband companies to provide crisp images, refined soundtracks, and rich contents for the enjoyment of "netizens." Although A-kuei and G.G. Long have been pioneers in a new business, it is likely that their achievements are just the beginning in what will be a rapidly developing field.