Dr Julian Stringer of ISIR (Institute for Screen Industries Research) has been awarded £45,000 from the British Council’s pilot Digital Collaboration Fund for the project Animation Heroes for Our Time: Co-Developing UK-China Characters/Stories to Address Loneliness and Grow the Screen Industries. The project runs until December 2021. The lead China partner is Xinhuanet (Beijing) and the project's Creative Director is John Stevenson, co-director of Kung Fu Panda (2008) and former head of story at DreamWorks Animation.
Other participants include Junshik Raul Yun, former CEO of BLAAD (Beijing) and executive visual effects producer of 2020 Academy Award Best Picture winner Parasite, Hollywood screenwriters Ryan Rowe and Pat Verducci, Arts University Bournemouth, Beijing Normal University, Final Frontier (Shanghai), Lakeside Arts (Nottingham), Shanghai Theatre Academy, Southeast University (Nanjing), University of Nottingham, Ningbo, China, Fantasy/Animation, and the Association for Chinese Animation Studies.
The key goal is to develop original UK-China character IP to produce a short animation 'test film' to raise investments for a planned future co-produced computer-generated animation short film.
Animation Heroes for Our Time is one of the first projects to be supported by the British Council’s Digital Collaboration Fund, which supports UK and overseas cultural partnerships to develop digitally innovative ways of collaborating.
Posted on Wednesday 14th April 2021