Festival puts spotlight on young animators

There, animation aficionados can also indulge themselves with dozens of shorts produced by indie Chinese animators and European animation students.

"We created the fest as a platform for young animators so their works can be seen by both industry professionals and the general public," said Wang Tianshi, the cofounder of Tengen Space Studios who initiated the fest in August.

A veteran animator, Wang and his colleagues have noted young animators usually lack platforms to showcase their works and many are awkward at finding them.

So at the festival, a roster of participating animation studios such as Shanghai Animation Film Studio, China Film Animation, and Pinta Studios can approach animators whose works have impressed them, Wang explained.

"Studios can decide if they want to hire the animators upon their graduation, or invest in their ideas and concepts," Wang said in a recent interview with the China Daily website.

Six animations from the Shanghai Animation Film Studio, China's oldest, will take festival-goers down memory lane; award-winning animator Sun Lijun will bring to the fest Harvest and Doomsday, two animation shorts inspired by Chinese ink painting and featuring cutting-edge 8K technology. Harvest competed in the Generation program of the 70th Berlin Film Festival earlier this year.