China's biggest cartoon festival has kicked off in eastern China's Hangzhou city.

The six-day event is drawing fans from around the country and big international names in the industry, including Dreamworks Animation, the world's largest cartoon publisher, Japan's SHUEISHA, and the team behind Hollywood blockbuster "Avatar."

The organizer hopes the festival will provide a platform for international exchanges and advance the development of domestically-made cartoons.

The China International Cartoon and Animation Festival has attracted participants from 47 countries and regions, setting a record for the event. Wang Xiaomei, the festival's spokeswoman, says the event now in its sixth year has become a grand gathering for the industry and fans from China and around the world.

She says last year's festival saw transactions of nearly 30,000 minutes of animation products.

This year, 150 animations, with 70 percent of them domestically made, were selected for the trade fair during the festival.

"The majority is domestic animations, and we also have some co-productions and foreign animations at the trade fair. Although there are still limitations on the import of foreign animation, it is gradually being lifted. We arranged two large venues for the fair, but judging from the situation this morning, the room is still limited."

Though this year's festival has seen participants from more countries, insiders say its influence still drags behind top-ranking cartoon festivals such as the Anncey Animation Festival in France. Wang Lei is an animation critic from the Communication University of China.

"At the Anncey Festival, the majority of participants and fans are not just from France. But at any cartoon festival in our country, we can see it is mainly domestically-oriented. None of them have made it into the schedule of mainstream industry professionals."

Wang Lei says this is partly because animation festivals in China are much younger than their well-established international counterparts. He suggests that the organizer focus more on international exchanges in technology, as digital animation has become the industry buzzword.

As for the development of Chinese cartoons, Wang Lei says pilot works by the country's young artists have reached advanced levels in terms of both artistic standards and techniques, while commercial and mainstream animations still fall behind those of major competitors.

He says patience is needed in the development of mainstream animation.

"The artistic level of animations produced by students may reflect the quality of Chinese animation in the next five or 10 years."

Wang Lei says he is confident that as long as young artists and students are given an appropriate environment, China will produce its own animation masters like Hayao Miyazaki and John Lasseter in the next decade.

Source: CRIENGLISH.com