Chapter 114 Controversial Characters
"So you're saying that someone else had already used a similar approach before we came here?"
"Where did he get the copyright?"
"Aren't they afraid that we won't agree to the image authorization?"
Zhen Shuwang: "Um... you will know the specific situation after you take a look. What I just said may be a little ambiguous, but you can rest assured that the other party definitely does not have the idea you said."
Zhen Shuwang also understood that what he had just said could easily be misunderstood, but the reality was that these animation companies had indeed each prepared samples derived from their selected characters.
They certainly understand that if Jia Wenyan does not agree to the authorization, their finished product will most likely only be a fan-made work on social media.
But the problem is that from their point of view, they are currently trying to obtain the authorization for their work from a production team that is not short of money or fame.
Within the Yongan system, whether it is Yongan College or Yongan Paradise, all official cultural intellectual property rights are concentrated in the Yongan Museum.
Everyone knows Jia Wenyan's situation, not to mention how much cultural and tourism revenue the Yong'an Amusement Park invested by Xu Yonghe has brought recently.
Just the peripheral products of Yongan Museum and the animation output in collaboration with Zhenxin Animation are enough to crush most animation companies.
Although strictly speaking, the Yongan Museum has not produced its own animation so far.
But as we all know, the purpose of most animation companies in producing animations has never been to make money from animations.
The real main source of income for the animation exhibition industry has always been the peripheral toys that match the animation.
In other words, the existence of anime is itself a long advertisement made by toy manufacturers in order to sell toys.
Even most domestic animations are not officially filed until the toys appear.
To be fair, if it weren’t for the fact that toys need animation to promote their products, most domestic manufacturers would probably not be involved in the animation industry.
Therefore, when the Yongan Museum first came to power, it created its own IP and boosted peripheral sales through various publicity efforts.
Domestic animation companies have already regarded the Yong'an Museum as a disguised peer.
Don't underestimate a company that owns "IP".
In this industry, as long as they have a "national IP", it means that they can continue to achieve a stable job in the animation circle through various sequels.
That is to say, with the traffic of Yongan Museum at that time, Jia Wenyan only needed to find a OEM company to easily create an animation work above the standard.
Then there is no need to mention what happened after Zhenxin Animation started to cooperate with Yongan.
From "The Story of the Stubborn Stone" to "The New Journey to the West", this couple has IP and technology respectively.
Such a combination is almost a monopoly-level overlord in the Chinese comics circle.
Especially later when Yongan Theme Park got off to a successful start and continued to be popular, almost everyone had accepted the positioning of this "couple" of Chinese animation Disney.
Therefore, the current Donghuang animation circle is mainly divided into two tracks.
One is the popular market dominated by traditional modernization, or Japanese anime, and the other is the national comic circle that started with the new national trend.
Under such market segmentation, standard or streamlined Japanese animation has no impact for the time being. However, in the Chinese animation circle, the existence of Yongan is unavoidable.
The Yongan Group has already started its own industrial layout after "The New Journey to the West".
Modern Japanese anime can still rely on various imaginations to innovate, but as for Chinese-style Chinese anime, so far most of them are still at the stage of being based on traditional Donghuang mythology.
This does not mean that the companies that produce domestic cartoons lack creativity, but that the domestic animation film market itself is not suitable for completely pure original IP.
The domestic film market is huge, but most audiences are still at the stage of "seeing who's starring in the film."
Just like every Chinese New Year, most audiences habitually decide which movie to watch based on their favorite/trusted movie stars.
When many domestic audiences go to see a movie, they don’t even know in advance what story the movie tells.
The key factor that determines whether the audience will buy the movie or not is not the movie itself, but the individual who "carries the box office".
For this reason, the vast majority of audiences have already decided which movie they want to watch before entering the cinema.
In this case, unless it is a "national IP" that has accumulated popularity over the years, most animated films simply have no chance of being a box office hit.
But at the same time, how many companies really have the ability and capital to create an IP that can be recognized by the public?
The risk is too high, so most production companies prefer to adapt existing myths and legends rather than creating original stories.
It's not just that Donghuang has a huge system of mythological stories, but more importantly, most of these stories have long passed the so-called "copyright" prosecution period.
Production companies can easily choose a free IP with its own traffic from traditional cultural stories for adaptation.
As such, naturally, not many companies that focus on Chinese comics would want to try to produce original Chinese comics.
This is the advantage brought by thousands of years of cultural heritage.
However, nowadays, the Yongan Group has brought Yongan Paradise out of the circle.
Almost all viewers associate the Yongan system with high-quality Chinese animation.
At this juncture, whether or not it is a product of the Yongan Group has become the most basic review standard for the public on Chinese animation, especially adapted Chinese animation.
Of course, this does not mean that other domestic animation companies cannot bypass the Yongan Group to produce their own domestic animation images.
But the problem is that the IP of "Journey to the West" covers such a wide range of Donghuang mythology that most of the mythological characters are represented in "Journey to the West".
Journey to the West can be said to be the "outline" of Donghuang mythology.
The high-quality work of Yongan in "New Journey to the West" has given the audience a preconceived impression of this "mythological animation outline".
Erlang Shen, the adult Nezha, the Dragon King of the East Sea, Taishang Laojun...
Unless there is a production company that is capable of producing a work that crushes the Yongan series, their character settings will most likely be questioned with comments like: "XXX shouldn't be like this."
Therefore, in order to avoid problems in this regard, the production company has to try to connect with the Yongan system to obtain the IP usage rights of a certain image in a similar way as much as possible.
It would be best if we could outsource the production of an entire animated film in a similar way to how we did with "New Journey to the West".
However, this means that they will not be able to use their own company's name as the main theme when the anime is released.
But the popularity of the Yongan Group itself is a guarantee of box office success.
Besides, since the production team chose to adapt the existing mythological story, they naturally don't care about the "original title" as much as the public imagines.
No matter how well an adapted story is adapted, it will still be attributed to the original author.
As for the production companies, the feedback they can get is basically from the perspective of painting or picture presentation.
Therefore, in most cases, for those creators who choose to adapt traditional cultural stories rather than create their own original IP, being able to make good things, or to make good things that can make money, is the bottom line.
What's more, at this moment, the Yongan Group should be worried about how to build its own "national animation kingdom" in a short period of time.
Just as Journey to the West is the outline of the Donghuang mythology story system, unlike Western stories that tend to favor a welfare worldview, Donghuang's traditional mythology stories have an intricate system of connections.
With the production capacity of Yongan Group alone, there is no way to realize this system in a short period of time.
And this is where other production companies have an opportunity.
As long as the conditions offered by the Yongan Group are not too harsh, they can naturally do OEM work under the name of the Yongan Group.
Therefore, in order to achieve this goal, the simplest and most effective way is to create derivative works based on the image that Yongan has already made public in the New Journey to the West.
Although it may be in vain, as long as their works and story adaptation are good enough, there is a great possibility that they will have the opportunity to take over this OEM order.
Therefore, in today's meeting, the goal of each production company is not only to obtain Jia Wenyan's approval, but also a very urgent task, which is to suppress other peers by obtaining authorization first.
Nowadays, the Chinese comics industry is booming. Cooperating with Yongan not only ensures basic publicity traffic, but is also an effective way to avoid duplication of topics among peers.
"Nezha", "Guanghan Fairy", "Houyi", "Lei Zhenzi", "Erlang Shen"...
One after another, IPs that were well-known in the mythology circle appeared on the list that the staff handed to Jia Wenyan.
At that moment, almost everyone's eyes were focused on Jia Wenyan.
At this moment, Jia Wenyan didn't know that according to the prior arrangements of the participants, the first work she would name would not only represent her personal intention, but she would also be the first to determine the release time in this meeting.
However, she never thought that when everyone else was thinking about which popular IP in the mythology story Jia Wenyan would choose, her eyes were suddenly attracted by the two most "eye-catching" words on the list:
Daji...
Jia Wenyan: "Is Su Daji what I thought it meant? Although I'm not sure why you want a newcomer like me to lead the process, I do have a work that I care about very much right now."
"That is the film Daji"
"We all know that Daji is a standard villain in mythology. I want to know what angle you are going to use to make this controversial character the protagonist."
"How do you plan to describe it as the protagonist without deviating from the main line of the original story?"
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