The idea for Grandma and Her Ghosts originated with Wang ­Shaudi’s partner ­Huang Li­ming, who went on to write the screenplay and produce the film. ­Huang had watched her once strict mother transform into a child-pampering grandmother while taking care of her nephew. Wang explains that the boy’s loneliness, innocence, and dependence on his grandmother gave rise to ­Huang’s emotionally rich story of a relationship between a grandmother and grandchild.

 

Grandma and Her Ghosts (courtesy of Rice Film)

Grandma and Her Ghosts: A Taiwanese original

While Wang and ­Huang knew how to make a live-action movie, Grandma and Her Ghosts was their first experience with animation, prompting Wang to remark, “Our ‘life difficulty index’ entered a peak period.” Wang secured a NT$10 million subsidy from the Government Information Office, but the two were well into production before they realized that it would be virtually impossible to complete the film within the one year allotted by the law. Fortunately, a friend introduced them to Richard Metson (Mai Ren­jie), an animation veteran who had worked in a variety of roles with the well-known Wang Film Productions. Musician Gerald Shih also became a key part of the movie’s miraculous completion.

While Grandma and Her Ghosts didn’t win a Golden Horse, it did win a best picture award from the 1998 Tai­pei Film Festival, and a Certificate of Merit for Animated Feature Films and Videos at the 1999 Chicago International Children’s Film Festival. It was also screened at festivals in Germany, Norway, Canada, Israel, the Czech Republic, the UK, France, Italy, and Japan. “They all thought it was great,” says Wang, speaking about the feedback they received at the festivals. “Grandma and Her Ghosts wasn’t a Hollywood-style cartoon. It was truly ori­ginal.” Unburdened by animation experience, they had simply followed their muse and told a Taiwanese story.

 

Grandma and Her Ghosts is a playful and moving look at the relationship between a grandmother and her grandson. (courtesy of Rice Film)

Lining up the next film

“Animation industry workers were the ones who shouldered the burden of our brashness and ignorance [about the production process],” recalls Wang.

Metson, who was already a well-known comics artist, brought a certain daring to the designs and the storyboarding, and even became involved with the voice acting. He says he hardly slept for eight months. “I wanted to show the world that Taiwan could create its own original animations.”

At one point, the Korean company that was animating Grandma and Her Ghosts asked Wang to deliver 250 “key frames” within a week. These key frames are images that show the animators where everything in a scene needs to be at “key” moments. The animators then animate all the movements in between. She was working around the clock to get the frames done when animation industry veterans ­Pongo Kuo, Fish Wang, and Chen Wei­song stepped forward to help, aiding her with the composition.

Wang ­Shaudi confirms that the foundation of Taiwan’s animation industry is deep and strong. That base, coupled with the desire of young animators to work on an original property, enabled the Grandma and Her Ghosts miracle. Metson agrees that Taiwan has plenty of capacity to create original work, but adds that many directors don’t have an opportunity to develop a second project after completing their first. He explains that Taiwan’s animation environment pushes many of its outstanding talents out of the industry.

 

Richard Metson chose to work on Grandma and Her Ghosts because he wanted to show the world that Taiwan could create its own original animations.

What’s the next step for original animation in Taiwan? Metson argues: “You first need the opportunity to do this work continuously.” He points out that Hong Kong used to shoot countless films each year and was once the world’s number-two exporter of movies. He recalls one Hong Kong director telling him: “Of course we’re shooting! If we weren’t, how would our lighting and craft services people eat?” When the work is steady, talented people naturally begin to emerge.

Engine Studios’ Vick Wang shares Metson’s view, agreeing that Taiwan has an abundance of creatives, but lacks people to organize and integrate the many parts of the production process. Wang breaks down the steps which go into producing an animated product: conception, the assembly of a management team, budgeting, story development, design, production, and ­postproduction. ­Studios should begin planning their next production the moment the market provides feedback on whatever they have just released. Hollywood’s animation pipeline has a rhythm that grows out of its experience produ­cing ­thousands of animated works. Taiwan’s industry, on the other hand, hasn’t produced enough original animation to really hone its skills, and it has therefore had a hard time developing the necessary management professionals.

The production process for animation is different than that for films. There are no star actors or directors, and it’s harder to find funding. Moreover, many people in the anima­tion industry are compelled to fill multiple roles: creating the property, raising the money to produce it, and then marketing the result. Metson hopes that the government can help create an environment that facilitates the develop­ment of animation in Taiwan by, for example, reducing or waiving taxes to attract corporate resources and relieve creators of their financial worries. Vick Wang aims to hone the survival skills of small and medium-­sized enterprises, teaching them how to negotiate with banks and arrange loans so they don’t have to rely entirely on government subsidies.

 

Richard Metson has been working on his own futuristic animated feature film, called Tie Nanhai, for years. “Not completing it would be tantamount to giving up our right to speak in the virtual world.” (courtesy of Richard Metson)

Metson dove back into animation production a number of years ago with a project titled Tie Nanhai (“Iron Boy”). He has put some NT$25 million into the project, but is still NT$250 million short of what he needs to finish it. Even so, he hasn’t given it up, explaining, “Not completing it would be tantamount to giving up our right to speak in the virtual world.”

Vick Wang came back to Taiwan after working in anima­tion in New York for nearly ten years, giving up steady work to found his own company. “I wanted to stand on this platform and claim my right to speak,” he says, “so I could talk about our culture, our lives, and our values.”

Exporting original animation

Speaking to a gathering of animation industry professionals, Wang wondered: “Taiwan is a maritime nation that relies on trade, and our animation industry exports skilled services, but have we considered exporting our own stories?”

Once you have original content, the question of how to play the export game arises. Wang still remembers trying to sell an award-winning short film at MIPCOM, a television industry trade show held in Cannes, France. The buyers there who dropped by his booth asked him simple, direct questions: “How much for it?” “How are we going to broadcast a short on TV?” “Are you going to develop it into a movie?” “What’s the film’s budget?” But Wang hadn’t given such issues much thought, and was caught flatfooted.

 

For Vick Wang, animation is a vocation. He is dedicated to exporting Taiwanese stories.

After spending some time licking his wounds, he re­entered the fray. He attended the next ­MIPCOM with a model from ­MuMuHug, which at that time was still just a pitch for a television series, and prepared answers to the questions buyers had asked him the previous time, yet struck out once again. Wondering how on earth he was supposed to play this game, Wang was on the verge of giving up. Instead, he chose to impersonate a buyer and made the rounds of other booths asking questions, while also noting what other exhibitors asked and how they set prices. His investigations led him to abandon his quest for external finan­cing, put his own capital into producing the show, and then deal with the IP economy to sell the finished product.

The completed MuMuHug has since been licensed for broadcast in more than 80 nations around the world, its production helping train several storytelling teams, and its export providing Engine Studios with stability as it continued its work with original animation. One of these, a show called Go Go Giwas that mixes Taiwanese Aboriginal culture with science education, was screened at the 2016 Chicago International Children’s Film Festival and in competition at the Bu­cheon International Animation Festival.

For Vick Wang, animation is a vocation. That, in turn, has enabled him to manage his team with an eye to craft, to lead them on a variety of cooperative, multidisciplinary projects to hone their skills, and to take on a diverse range of animation projects based on his interest in the creator’s “vision.” Wang expects to complete LAQI, a 3D animated feature film that he hopes will propel Taiwanese original animation into the international spotlight, in two years.

On Happiness Road’s 2018 Golden Horse for Best Anim­ated Feature Film was the local animation industry’s first in a long time. As an emotional Metson put it: “It took a great deal to produce On Happiness Road, but can we ensure that it isn’t just a one-off? Can we make sure that all the dir­ectors who want to produce animation have an opportunity to make follow-ups?” Can government, industry, and society support animation directors so that they can continue to tell Taiwanese stories? If they do, Taiwanese animation can continue its journey down its own happiness road.