International distribution

The TV festival of Cannes held every April is an important platform for international distribution. Successful examples include CCTV's documentary A Bite of China and the Rabbit Gang series.

Many deals are struck during such international events, but the related discussions have often been going on for years.

Qiu Yuanyuan, director of international cooperation department at Jiangsu Broadcasting Corporation said to CNTV in 2011 that the products and strategies vary according to the region. "For instance, the Middle East market likes animation as well as period drama while Europe and the US prefer TV films and documentaries," said Qiu.

A noticeable improvement in recent years is that more kinds of animations are being produced and with better technology. And ultimately, for companies like Toonmax Media, animation is a product and is produced according to the needs of the market, which is a welcomed sign in the maturing industry.

On the other hand, there is still a lack of understanding of the international mainstream market reflected both in the content of productions and in the marketing process. The general convention internationally is to produce a short piece of a TV project first for showing at the trade markets: further alterations are made based on the buyers' feedback. Chinese production companies, however, usually just take finished productions to an event.

"You can't just wait until international trade exhibitions to communicate with the buyers. More importantly, we need to see if the product has an international way of expression," said Dong.

For Toonmax Media, putting Chinese elements into a universal story is an important way to attract more opportunities for international distribution. Rabbit Gang set a great example. An easier method to achieve the same result is probably to cooperate with international teams both on the production side and the marketing side. And that is just what the company has been doing for its next adaptation of a comic - the Peking Opera Cats.