Could ‘On Happiness Road’ be the end of the road for its animation industry?
Taiwan News
Date: 2018/01/14
By: Jean-Jacques Chen, Taiwan News, Contributing Writer
Animation, and Taiwan.
Two words that seemingly do not mesh automatically in the same sentence in most
Image from @OnHappinessRoad Facebook page.
people’s minds.
And most people would be wrong!
Taiwan has actually got quite a long story in the worldwide animation industry.
Ever seen those little indie animated movies called Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Lion King and Mulan, made by an up and coming indie studio called Disney ? Well, it turns out that if all the pre-production, scripts, character designs and storyboards of these movies made in Disney’s headquarters in California, most of their animated production was actually contracted to… Taiwan!
Long before China, South Korea, and now other Southeast Asian countries such as Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia got on board; Taiwan has been, for almost 2 decades, the world’s animation production powerhouse, from the 80’s to the early 2000’s, having orders coming from the U.S., Europe and even Japan ! This period was commonly called by nostalgic Taiwanese veteran animators who are still connected to the trade nowadays, the golden era of Taiwanese animation. [FULL STORY]
