CATDOLL: Big Hornworm Comics APP Leads the Mobile Era of Chinese Comics

On April 24, 2015, Shanghai Tongshi Company held a press conference in Beijing to announce the launch of the Big Hornet APP comic application. The conference attracted nearly 400 fans from all over the country to attend the conference, and the atmosphere was lively. Dozens of funds and capital parties occupied all the guest seats, and nearly 60 print media and new media reported on the scene.

Enthusiastic fans

What is a giant hornworm?

The three characters of Dajiaochong come from Dachu, which means "touch" is separated and read separately. It is a special word for the second dimension. In the traditional paper media era, cartoonists used drawing boards to draw. In the IT era, cartoonists began to use digital touch panels instead. Such cartoonists are famous and called Dachu. They are the heroes of the comics industry in the Internet era.

Big Hornworm: Telling a good story on mobile devices

In March 2015, there were rumors on the Internet that more than 30 first-line Chinese cartoonists had collectively switched to Dajiaochong, including top authors on super platforms such as Tencent Comics. What kind of APP is Dajiaochong, and why did it attract these authors who had already received 1 billion or 2 billion hits on their original platforms to join Dajiaochong?

Dajiaochong is an original comic reading platform for mobile phones developed by Shanghai Tongshi, focusing on original plot comics. Within less than a month of its launch, several concepts it created, such as "daily update" and "big touch", have even become buzzwords in the industry, triggering a wave of attention in the domestic comic industry.

The Birth of the Big Hornworm

Will “Content is King” give birth to a phenomenal company on the mobile side?

"In the first quarter of 2015 alone, Tongshi invested heavily in IP. In terms of game IP, it purchased the mobile game copyright of the top Japanese comic IP Hatsune Miku and the mobile game copyright of the online novel The King's Avatar. In terms of investment in original content, Tongshi is expected to spend several times more than game IP in the first half of the year."

Wang Jun, the CEO of Shanghai Tongshi, the promoter behind the Dajiaochong APP, accepted an interview with reporters. "Tongshi invested in online literature IP and Japanese IP in the first half of the year. Last week, we paid the Japanese party 1.4 million US dollars to purchase the mobile game development rights of a heavy IP. And this is less than a fraction of our investment in original content."

Shanghai Tongshi used to be an animation publishing company and IP operation company. In 2013, it began to enter the online market. While developing its own products, it also cooperated with partners to develop animation mobile games and web games. "Tongshi is currently walking on two legs. One leg is to purchase mature IPs. Most of these IPs are produced in paper media or PC Internet and have accumulated a large number of users. Tongshi uses its ability to integrate resources in the animation industry, and allies with first-class CPs and distributors to create high-quality animation IP mobile games to realize revenue."

Live COSPLAY performance of "The King's Avatar"

For example, Hatsune Miku, a Japanese anime IP purchased by Tongshi, is a world-class IP with pan-entertainment influence, and its social influence even exceeds that of One Piece and Naruto. Tongshi has been working in the traditional animation industry for more than a decade and has accumulated a large number of talents, technologies, and industry resources. With these resources, Tongshi has more cross-industry integration advantages than traditional animation companies and game companies, and uses IP to leverage the entire industry chain, which is an important way for Tongshi to obtain cash flow.

"This is a tactic of using IP to support IP, and the purpose is to serve the grand strategy." Wang Jun explained Tongshi's strategic thinking: Tongshi invested tens of millions in original IP in the first half of this year, mainly to cultivate hundreds of comic studios across the country and help them upgrade to professional and commercial studio clusters that produce creative content on mobile terminals. These studio clusters are the core creative force of Tongshi's Big Hornworm APP.

"Child Rock will increase its investment in this area. This year's total investment may exceed 100 million or 200 million yuan, and may double next year. According to our estimates, with a total investment of more than 1 billion yuan in the next three years, we can initially build a mobile content platform. There are no more than 500 studios with commercial capabilities in the entire animation industry chain in China. In addition to building three internal studios, Child Rock mainly relies on these 500 studios to provide the most core creativity, thereby attracting 10,000 to 20,000 cartoonists to enter this industry. China's Marvel and Shueisha will be born from these studios."

These works will be released in batches on the Dajiaochong Comics APP. Currently, the Dajiaochong Comics APP is still in the stage of "reading comics" with daily comics as the main feature. After the product line is enriched, "we will provide interactive functions designed with subversive mobile Internet thinking. These things are still in the confidential research and development stage. Dajiaochong 2.0 version will be launched in 2016. I can guarantee that the product will attract another 100 million people within 3 months of its launch. Wang Jun is confident about the future of his product."

"People who make content products are confident in themselves. This confidence comes from years of hard work in the content industry. The most important thing is to deal directly with readers on the front line and understand what they need. I often say that in the past, when we planned a topic or a product, the effort we put into packaging, text, storytelling, and trends was no less than that of real estate planning, but the input-output ratio was completely unfair. But I think that this era has reversed, and some things are moving in a good, healthy, and fair direction. The spring of the content industry has arrived."

Wang Jun believes that the content industry will be a core topic and industrial direction in the mobile Internet era.

Wang Junjin explained the strategic plan at the press conference

"You need to see what the top Internet giants in China are busy with. This does not mean that small and medium-sized companies should follow what BAT is doing, but you need to understand their strategies so that you can define the boundaries of your own strategy."

Wang Jun further explained that the past year, 2014, was the year of IP and IP ecosystem construction for Chinese Internet giants. In 2014, the term "IP" began to become popular throughout the Internet, and the giants were busy making plans. For example, Xiaomi introduced Sina's editor-in-chief Lao Chen, and its conspiracy was to lay out content on the mobile and box terminals. Alibaba, which just went public last year, spent 20 billion yuan to integrate pan-entertainment resources such as Huayi, Guangguang, Youku Tudou, China Culture, and Yulebao, "bloodbath the cultural industry." Tencent, which first proposed the concept of "pan-entertainment", began to make comprehensive plans in online literature and film and television. Ma Huateng even declared that Tencent's main adjustment in industrial layout will be from the upper level to the underlying structure, and the upper-level cooperation will be handed over to the partners. Tencent will mainly do two things in the future: the underlying framework of the Internet and content.

The layout of the big guys shows that there is a lack of content on the mobile side, especially the lack of original high-quality content directly generated by the mobile side. In Wang Jun's view, the development of the content industry requires time to accumulate. You can transplant paper media content and PC content to the mobile side, but for mobile, it is not truly original. There is a window period for the development of such an industry. For large and small companies, everyone stands on the same starting line on the mobile side.

"So on the mobile side, relying on content advantages, there is a chance to produce one or two phenomenal companies. This time window is only about two to three years, and this is where KidStone's opportunity lies."

How does the big beetle tell stories on mobile devices?

After the strategy is determined, the next step is execution. In order to tell a good story on the mobile terminal, Tongshi mobilized all the company's resources and strength and prepared for two years.

"In fact, the whole preparation took 20 years." Wang Jun explained in detail, "The entire entrepreneurial team of Tongshi has been engaged in offline animation paper media and peripheral industries for nearly 20 years." Wang Jun himself has participated in the publication of nearly 4,000 books and magazines, and Tongshi has participated in the production of more than a thousand original animation books. The company has established a long-term cooperation mechanism with thousands of novelists, playwrights, and cartoonists, and has cooperated with more than hundreds of creative agencies. Looking through the company history of Tongshi, it has cooperated with more than a dozen international first-line animation brands, including high-end brands such as Transformers, Disney, HELLOKITTY, etc. In China, Tongshi has a history of five or six years in developing content and peripherals for Tencent Interactive Entertainment's games.

Tongshi Company signs 6 cartoonists

Tongshi is also developing its own IP and brand content. Star Era, as the first all-media animation experiment, has achieved initial results. Currently, Star Era has developed a huge original world view, with more than 100 writers participating in the creation. Nearly 10 background novels have been published, and about 10 novels will be published every year in the next 10 years, forming a story chronicle of the world view. As the first domestic animation web game, Star Era has gathered about 3 million fans, and nearly 500,000 fans in Japan. In the summer of 2015, Tongshi will launch the web game and mobile game "Star Era 2". Together with the paper media comics and mobile comics currently being launched, Tongshi hopes that by the end of 2015, this IP will accumulate more than 6 million fans on the mobile terminal.

"This is Tongshi's most core capability: the ability to tell stories." Wang Jun introduced in detail the operation of Tongshi's story creativity: Tongshi has fully absorbed Hollywood's idea of ​​industrializing creative work, and established a complete process system for planning, producing, and completing a story within the company. It has also developed forty or fifty external collaborative companies at each node. At the same time, in order to study how to tell a good story on the mobile terminal, three simulation teams were specially established internally to explore a complete set of operational experience. Now Tongshi is sharing these experiences with partners.

"We ensured how to tell a daily story well at three levels, and we also ensured that this story could be told continuously for three years."

In terms of story planning, Tongshi has an editorial team of about 30 people who have experience in planning content for dozens of first-line brands and thousands of original animation content, and they are constantly replenished with fresh blood. In terms of collaboration, Tongshi adopts a team approach of temporary formation and cross-covering of fighter teams to help authors plan stories. It can be said that the stories launched by the Big Hornet APP have been polished by a professional team. As time goes by, these stories will be effective in the middle game and will reflect the scripting capabilities presented by professional planning. This ability ensures that the concept of "mobile daily update" can be implemented.

In terms of funding, Tongshi provides two types of funding support. One is for contracted professional players, for which Tongshi provides a package of royalties, reading payment dividends, and full industry chain development dividends. Tongshi gives authors more than 50% of the dividends. "We hope to launch more than 1,000 "great cartoonists" similar to the masters of online literature on the mobile terminal, and ensure that each author's annual income exceeds one million or ten million. Only such a virtuous cycle can ensure the continuous emergence of high-quality works.

The author of the popular online novel "The King's Avatar" is Butterfly Blue

As for scattered, uncontracted authors, Dajiaochong also has a powerful author support plan. Especially for authors who continuously upload works and whose works are of excellent quality, Dajiaochong has designed a multi-level work reward plan, which is unparalleled in the current domestic animation industry.

"The daily story update plan of Big Hornworm is a great feat in the history of world animation. It is unprecedented and this is what we are most proud of. Historically, whether it is Marvel, DC, or Shueisha, the fastest way to tell stories is weekly updates. Shueisha's Shonen Jump established its dominant position in the paper media era, in Japan and even in the world because of weekly updates. At present, Chinese animation companies can only provide works that are updated weekly, and the number is not large. The real daily update is not only reflected in the simple improvement of time efficiency from weekly to daily. A three-year plot story on a mobile terminal, one story explosion and one meme every day, three years means 1,000 memes. The density, connotation, and level of the story have undergone subversive changes. From daily to weekly, it is not a 7-fold speed increase, but a 7*7=49-fold qualitative change."

IP ecological industry chain of the big hornworm

Tongshi has natural industry advantages in terms of full copyright and full industry chain operations. Tongshi has 20 years of experience in publishing comic books and magazines, and four to five years of experience in peripheral industries. It has formed its own industry closed loop in terms of O2O and down-to-earth. These are all important capabilities for Tongshi to operate the Big Beetle IP in the future.

In the most important aspect of game monetization, Tongshi has accumulated three years of experience. At present, Tongshi has basically completed the preliminary preparations for a closed loop in the layout of the mobile game industry: within Tongshi, it has two mobile game self-development teams and one web game self-development team, including a game operation team. Outside Tongshi, it has in-depth cooperation with three mobile game development companies to develop heavy animation mobile games and stand-alone games. In the outer layer, Tongshi has integrated more than a dozen first-line game CPs and distribution companies to form an ecological alliance around IP development and product operation.

The character design of the mobile game "The King's Avatar" is revealed

The character design of the mobile game "The King's Avatar" is revealed

In the future, Tongshi will focus on the gamification of high-quality IPs on Bighorn Worm in two directions: First, on its own platform, it will form an internal traffic cycle of stories, IPs, games, and stories, and directly convert story fans on mobile terminals into paying game players. Second, it will adopt a joint operation model externally and cooperate with all distribution platforms.

In terms of film and television planning, the key plan of Dajiaochong is to develop online animation, and this plan has been put on the agenda. Tongshi is setting up an animation company to develop online animation based on its own popular IP. With the popularity of mobile video and the desire for content, online animation will likely explode into a market of hundreds of billions of yuan. At present, all video companies are making plans in the field of online self-made dramas and online animation. Tongshi has mastered these high-quality story resources and is at the upper end of the industry chain, which has laid a solid foundation for future development.

"The plan for the entire Big Hornworm APP is to release a major version every year starting from 2015, and will enter the community ecosystem in 2017. We hope to provide a platform for communication and exchange for China's ACG people. We look forward to this day."