CATDOLL: There is a clear gap between the number of Chinese animation talents and market demand

At present, the animation industry has become a "sunrise" cultural industry with huge development potential, which is intellectual-intensive, labor-intensive, technology-intensive and capital-intensive. There are more than 50,000 animation companies in my country. The development speed corresponds to the substantial increase in animation production, and the number of Chinese cartoons has become a "blowout" trend every year. The pace of diversified development of the animation market has accelerated sharply, but the lack of animation talents and the lag in talent training mechanism have become a huge bottleneck restricting the development of my country's animation industry.

In animation, there is a clear gap between the number of animation talents and the market demand. You only need to investigate on the Internet to know the demand for the number of animation talents in the talent market in various regions. In just 5 minutes, the job requirements for animation talents are constantly updated. The positions include coloring, in-between painting, original painting, storyboarding, modeling, screenwriter, director, etc. The higher the order, the higher the level. The professional requirements for practitioners are also getting higher and higher, and the income naturally increases step by step. Practitioners in low-level positions can be graduates of animation majors, or they can transfer from fine arts majors or computer majors, but high-level talents in the animation industry are basically graduates of related majors. Only after experiencing the test of practice and gradually improving can they meet the job requirements.

In 2012, statistics showed that the current demand gap for animation talents in China is about 150,000, and it is expected that the gap will reach 600,000 in 3 to 5 years. The existing practitioners are basically single-production type, and there is a serious lack of high-end creative and industry development talents. Due to the shortage of high-end creative talents, my country's independent animation brand research and development capabilities are weak, and original high-quality products are scarce. According to the "China Animation Industry and Consumption Survey Report" released by the Digital Media Department of the School of Art and Media of Beijing Normal University this year, the average box office of all domestic animated films in the past five years is 20 million yuan, but the average box office of imported animation is 73 million yuan, and there is still a big gap between the two.

At present, enterprises need compound animation talents who are proficient in both art and technology. For example, for game designers, in addition to programming knowledge and development knowledge, expression and drawing skills are particularly important. At present, there are six types of talents in short supply in the animation industry, namely: original storytelling talents, animation software development talents, 2D and 3D animation production talents, animation product design talents, online and mobile game development talents, and animation game marketing talents.

Industry insiders said that in the rapidly developing animation industry, from the perspective of market demand, there are few complex technical and design talents, which is obviously out of proportion compared with the huge demand market, and the number of domestic animation practitioners is obviously insufficient. According to conservative estimates, there is a gap of 200,000 minutes of animation in my country, which means that there will be 25,000 original cartoon talents, and the gap of auxiliary talents is as high as 80,000 to 100,000.

Although there are more than 20 animation production bases in China with the attention and support of the national government, it is still far from meeting the potential market demand of 100 billion yuan in China's animation market. If China's animation industry wants to seek further development, animation talents must be recruited first.