Not many viewers of Pink Panther and
The Little Mermaid realize that they
were made in Taiwan--and very well
made, too. For twenty years, the animators
and artists of Wang Film Productions Co.
have been collaborating with famous
studios across the world, winning a
reputation as "Asia's Disney."
One Saturday morning in1990, Garfield, the Ninja Turtles, the Smurfs and other world-famous cartoon superstars came together in the same TV program for the first time, in support of President George Bush's anti-drug initiative. An estimated 16 million Americans watched the animated stars rise above commercial interests and copyright technicalities in a story that involved persuading a fourteen-year-old boy not to take drugs, but few of them realized that this film, Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue, had been made in Taiwan--just one of the increasingly well-known works of Wang Film Productions Co., a company which over the past twenty years has made more than 3,000 animated cartoons and been hailed by Newsweek as "Asia's Disney."
Wang Film Productions Co., (Wang Film) was founded by James Wang in 1978 under the name Cuckoos' Nest. Wang had long been a devoted cartoon fan, showing an interest in comic strips while in elementary school and winning first prize in a comic strip competition while still at high school. He then went to the United States, where he obtained an M.A. in audio -visual education from Indiana University. After gaining some hands-on experience, he was able to move to Hollywood, doing animation work for Hanna-Barbera while simultaneously studying cartoon creation at the University of Southern California. Throughout this long apprenticeship, however, Wang never lost sight of his ambition to return to Taiwan and help raise its animation standards.
"At that time, Taiwan's cartoon production was completely controlled by the Japanese," Wang recalls. "They were reluctant to teach their Taiwanese staff the whole process of cartoon creation, so standards never had a chance to improve. But then I discovered that it was getting more and more expensive to produce cartoons in the United States, because of soaring labor costs, whereas fine arts educational standards in Taiwan were improving and labor was much cheaper. So I reasoned that Taiwan could be a promising place to develop a cartoon industry."
Spurred by these considerations, Wang wrote a proposal highlighting the merits of Taiwan's labor force, its technical standards, and the investment climate, and submitted it to Pan Chen-chew, the then chairman of Taiwan's National Youth Commission in Taiwan, which had established a fund to help young people set up their own companies. He also sought to interest William Hanna, cofounder of Hanna-Barbera and subsequently his employer and friend. Both men responded encouragingly, so in 1978 Wang returned to Taiwan to set up his own company, which was able to get off the ground immediately with contracts awarded by Hanna.
Wang Film is located in an industrial park in Hsintien, a suburb of Taipei. Its façade is so unassuming that few passersby suspect that this establishment has a hand in producing 80 percent of the world's cartoons. Once the visitor enters the seven -story building, however, the picture changes dramatically, because exotic paintings, bronze statues, and a plethora of plant life make this place more like an upmarket art gallery than a commercial enterprise. Staffers wear leisure clothes and sneak ers, and the overall atmosphere is friendly as well as comfortable.
"Respect and flexibility are the principles that guide this company," Wang says. "The employees are its most valuable assets, because its very existence depends on their efforts." Steve Chen, supervisor of the Toon Land division, has been here from the beginning and he is in no doubt that this is a company that takes good care to protect its "most valuable assets." "From day one, we provided a cozy work environment, modern equipment, good training, and good salaries. Compared with the Japanese-funded cartoon studios of the time, our company must have seemed like a palace."
Besides the care and respect of the management, employees enjoy a wide range of freedoms. For example, they may openly support a political party, which most of Taiwan's commercial enterprises prohibit. In the run-up to last year's local government elections, the company was plastered with campaign posters and banners. The company is also tolerant of its employees' little idiosyncrasies. "Some of my colleagues regularly start the work day by burning incense and praying at their desks," Chen says with a smile.
In light of the above, it is not surprising to find some extremely loyal and dedicated staffers working for the company. "My colleagues are very diligent and cooperative," says production manager Fonzie Lin. "If necessary, they'll work around the clock to meet a deadline." The film of Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue was a good example: a twenty-two minute cartoon like that would normally take twelve to sixteen weeks to finish, but Wang Film worked day and night to complete it in just six weeks. And over the years, staffers have stayed loyal to their employer through thick and thin.
The late 1980s, for example, were a difficult time, with the appreciating New Taiwan dollar constantly eating away at the company's overseas profits. The company was forced to announce approximately 600 lay-offs from a total work force of 1,000 in order to survive. But unusually for Taiwan, nobody took to the streets in protest, and when the company was ready to recruit staff again, they willingly came back.
"The reason why most American studios have abolished sets divisions [the department responsible for creating the backgrounds to animated films] is that the artists who work there are control-resistant," says Vincent Liu, head of Wang Film's own sets division. "But many of our artists have been working here for more than ten years." Small wonder, then, that the company has long had a reputation for producing only the best. In the first year of operations, the vice president of Hanna -Barbera came to inspect the company and liked what he saw so much that he immediately signed a contract for production of the Laff-A-Lympics series to be aired on US television. In just one year, the studio produced seventeen half-hour cartoons on an OEM (original equipment manufacturer) basis for Hanna-Barbera.
Wang Film's reputation spread rapidly, and it now has contracts with Disney, Universal, Warner Brothers, Film Roman, and many other companies throughout the world. Steve Chen recalls a time when Film Roman was planning to subcontract the labor-intensive artwork on the TV series The Mask . "Many companies from all over the world were bidding for the contract," he says. "But Film Roman made all the bidders take an art test, and we won."
Chen's favorite story concerns a German company that three years ago urgently needed help to finish one section of a film within deadline. Someone recommended Wang Film. At first the Germans looked askance at their would-be Taiwan collaborators, because they did not believe their work would be up to scratch. But once they saw the animators' drawings they decided to take a chance and award the contract, and the technical experts they sent to Taipei to monitor the work gave the company's techniques and operations such high marks that the following year the German company subcontracted the entire artwork of a film to Wang Film. "Hollywood people call us the Magic Box, because whether we're talking quality or efficiency, we can meet all our clients' demands," Chen says.
It seems a bold claim, but Chen is not boasting. Apart from all the best-known Hollywood studios, many front-rank animation companies in other parts of the world, such as Cinar in Canada, BIC in France, and Spain's BRB are clients of Wang Film. The company has been honored with numerous industry awards, and its contribution to the Smurfs series won its client Emmys in 1982 and 1983, as well as securing it the highest audience ratings in category for five successive years. The Little Troll Prince won the 1988 Angel Award, and the TV series The Flintstones won the 1987 Youth in Film Award, while Tiny Toon Adventures and Animanics respectively won the 1990-1991 and 1995-1996 Daytime Emmy awards. Wang Film has helped clients harvest seven Emmys in total.
A great deal of this remarkable success depends on sheer drudgery. For many years the company's artists would draw the thousands of frames that go to make up an animated cartoon, working according to the client's script and instructions, after which technicians had to transfer the finished drawings onto film that then had to be shipped to the client for final editing. Although it somewhat resembles assembly-line work12,000 hand-drawn pictures are needed for a cartoon lasting twenty -two minutes, the standard length of a cartoon in the United States after allowing for commercials--it is the foundation of the company's prosperity. Wang is not slow to give credit for the help he received from outside sources. "The technical experts sent by our clients have years of experience and know some excellent techniques," he says. "Learning from them has saved us many growing pains and raised our standards."
Formerly the company relied mainly on contract work, but profit margins in that area are shrinking fast, and nowadays any serious player must consider going in for full production, which involves doing everything from designing the characters and writing the script, right down to putting the final animated film in the can. Wang Film has now produced three big-screen animated films and two TV series based on well-known Chinese stories, and one of them, The Quest for Magic, won the 1992 Taipei Golden Horse Award. The company also recently cooperated with Public Television to produce an animated story about an aboriginal youth. Public Television funded the film, while Wang Film was responsible for creating all the characters, writing the script, and producing the sets.
Animated film is very expensive to produce. For example, a twenty-two-minute TV cartoon costs more than NT$4 million (US$121,580), and a big-screen animated film correspondingly more. On top of that, allowance has to be made for marketing expenses, which often equal those of production. Western-made animated films already have access to a world wide network of relatively stable outlets and are accordingly more cost-effective to produce than Chinese-language animated films, which still have to scratch around for buyers.
The way ahead for Wang Film could be rough and rocky, but James Wang remains optimistic. "As we feel our way forward, we do lose time and money," he admits. "But Chinese animated films should find their market in the near future, and when that happens we want to be prepared." His optimism may be justified as early as June, when Disney's once-a-year big -screen animated film, Mulan, will debut. The movie is based on a well-known Chinese story and if it does well it may finally pry open the door to the big time for Chinese-style cartoons. If it does, James Wang and his team will be ready.
Besides getting into full-production animation, Wang Film also plans to make integrated educational and entertainment animations as part of its strategy for popularizing animation art. To this end, in 1996 the company established its Toon Land division, which has organized numerous activities that have proved very popular. Its first Children's Cartoon Summer Camp in 1996, for example, attracted 200 children from Taiwan and abroad, a figure that doubled the following year.
In 1997, the company cooperated with the government to launch the island's first "Animation Month," designed to introduce participants to the process of cartoon production while teaching them how to draw. This turned out to be a real success, attracting more than 10,000 people. At its Hsintien headquarters the company has also set up an animation center that offers weekly classes in cartoon production, and it is now working on a museum that will eventually seek to harmonize cartoons' entertainment and educational functions, although at present exhibits are limited to an introduction to the history of animation and the processes involved.
But if the company is to enjoy a bright future, change will undoubtedly be necessary. Foreseeing the need to keep in step with the times, it has begun working on multimedia products and has collaborated with advertising agencies to produce promotional and educational shorts. It has also downsized its Taipei headquarters in an effort to keep costs within bounds, computerizing the animation process and gradually transferring the labor-intensive contract work to subsidiaries in areas like Thailand and mainland China, where labor is cheaper. At present it employs approximately 450 people in Taipei, 500 in mainland China, and 350 in Thailand. Together these employees are capable of producing more than 200 half-hour films a year, making Wang Film the largest OEM animation company in Asia.
The company is now in its twentieth year, and although there have been ups and downs, two things that have never changed are its vitality and optimism. William Hanna wrote in his autobiography, "While still in his twenties, James [Wang] had formed his own production studio in a garage in Taipei, hoping to secure production contracts from such American animation studios as Disney and Warner. To his dismay, none of them would see him on his initial visit to the US....During those two decades, James Wang has developed that first embryonic studio into a flourishing company that has employed more than 600 people. Horatio Alger would have doffed his hat."
Wang himself is quite clear about where the company should go next. "In the next twenty years, we want to become the East Asian leader under our own brand name," he says. A daring ambition--but in the animated world of James Wang, nothing is impossible.