Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

On July 16, the press conference of "Comics has a New Life" 2023 was held at the second Quick View Comic Park KKWORLD 2023 in Guangzhou. In the face of the current economic environment, look at the release of a boutique, professional, global content fashion strategy, continue to promote the continuous emergence of high-quality cartoons, and launched a summer boutique list containing 126 IP.

At the press conference, look at the founder & CEO Annie Chen delivered a keynote speech on "Comics have a New Life" to share her thoughts on the current situation and future of China's comic industry. "what we are going through now is probably the most difficult time since the birth of Internet comics," Chen said. But the hope of bottoming out and rebound is often brewing in the trough. I believe that China's animation industry is still in its infancy and there are still many opportunities. Look, we hope to work with creators to patiently polish the content, open the market, and live together and prosper together. "

Because of this, it is proposed that high-quality cartoon content can emerge in the market more efficiently through the implementation of new content, new commerce and new technology, so as to accelerate the birth of IP, which has world-class influence, and further release the commercial value of this cultural carrier, so as to promote the Chinese comic industry to enter a new stage of development.

Take a look at the strategy to promote content fashion and release 126 IP summer boutique films.

Unwittingly, the era of rapid growth of honey has gradually faded away. Internet companies, which have always been regarded as synonymous with high growth, have experienced varying degrees of decline in growth in 2022, and the same difficult period has become a common dilemma for various industries. Reducing costs and increasing efficiency in many ways to make a profit is also becoming the most important proposition in the current business society.

The comic book industry is also in the middle of the test. According to Annie Chen, the founder of Quick look, working with the creator to polish the work is still an important step in solving the problem.

It is precisely for this reason that to vigorously promote the popular style strategy of high-quality, professional and global content and concentrate resources on the continuous emergence of high-quality comics is a new content methodology precipitated by a quick look at deep-ploughed comics in the past nine years.

Take a look at the content co-ordinator Hu Wen introduced at the press conference, the so-called high-quality, that is, to break the past Internet content popular money-burning enclosure model, more accurate and scientific spending, the pursuit of higher investment return ratio; at the same time, but also to get rid of data-only, only big IP, nominally named authors, only hot industry malpractices, only these quantifiable data as a reference, return to rational polishing boutique content.

"it's more about combining the unique advantages of the cartoon itself. For example, our most popular cartoons," palpitating Heart "and" Global weird era ", are all types of live-action movies and television that are difficult to interpret," said Hu Wen. "at the same time, we will accurately select the content that can actually open up commercial links in China."

On the one hand, specialization is reflected in the formulation of creative standards, which have set corresponding standards for every key link in the process of cartoon production, from topic selection planning and production to full-link commercial development after launch. On the other hand, look at the upgrading of the organizational structure of the content department. Under the guidance of the principle of taking good stories as the king, and under the overall planning of the Strategy Central Station, a selection center, a script center, and a production center are set up to systematically enable the production of full-category content, so that data, commerce and creativity can be organically combined to improve the probability of works becoming popular.

This year, take a look at the summer boutique list of science fiction comics "Little Mushroom" is the concentrated embodiment of Quick look specialization. In the whole process from the early planning to the landing of the work, through the introduction of creative talents such as the doctorate of the Chinese Department of Peking University and the doctorate of art, as well as the scientific management of the division of labor and process, as soon as this work was unveiled, it attracted the applause and expectation of countless users.

At the same time, on the basis of the global distribution of comics, we are also exploring other modes of global cooperation, such as co-production and joint development, to further demonstrate the oriental imagination to the world and create works that are popular with comic book lovers around the world. At the press conference, Quick also announced a strategic cooperation with piccoma, the largest electronic cartoon and electronic novel distribution platform in Japan, which also means the opening of a new chapter in the global layout.

In the overseas production of comics, look at the production of high-quality cartoons have also attracted the attention of overseas markets. According to Hu Wen, look is working with CJ OLIVE NETWORKS, a subsidiary of CJ, a large South Korean entertainment company, to promote the overseas distribution of comic dramas. CJ Group is strong in the film and television entertainment sector, and the production and distribution of films and TV dramas such as "parasites", "ghosts" and "witty Doctor Life" have gained high popularity and reputation.

Based on the content fashion strategy of Quick look, this conference released a total of 126 IP summer boutique films, including 97 boutique comics, 27 boutique comics and 2 S-level homemade animations, covering four categories: romantic youth, aestheticism, passionate fantasy and sci-fi future.

Among them, romantic youth has always been a unique and powerful category. In this release of the film list, we can still see Kuaiwang's continuous efforts in writing the story of youth that belongs to the localization of China. A series of popular IP, such as "can't hide secretly" season 3, "wife fans get to know", "marry the villain" and "wrong flirt", will meet with comic book lovers in the near future.

At the same time, the new blockbuster cartoons of other categories, such as "lovely allergen", "Business Paradox", "additional Legacy" and "Little Mushroom" also ignited the enthusiasm of the audience.

The eagerness and expectation of the users on the spot is the best annotation for the quick product.

Stick to the long-term doctrine of IP development, and strive to become a leading agent in Chinese comics.

If we look at the mature markets such as Riman and Meiman, the head cartoon IP has a strong vitality and "banknote ability". According to media statistics, in 2022 alone, the average total income of 12 comic books and 84-year-old IP, including Batman, Dragon Ball, Avengers, Doraemon, etc., exceeded 16.7 billion US dollars.

Therefore, on the basis of creating the popular style of new content, further prolonging the life cycle of comic IP, magnifying its influence, and finally creating greater commercial value is also an important way for the comic industry to tide over the difficulties. And this is the driving force that Kuaiwang always adheres to the long-term principle of commercial development of comic IP and continues to expand the commercialization model of comics.

In fact, over the past few years, Quick look has been exploring the commercialization of comic IP at all stages of its life cycle, from conception, creation, serialization to completion. According to Niu Guozhu, the person in charge of commercialization, Quick look has gradually improved the IP industry ecology of Chinese comics. Through diversified development means such as film and television, books, animation, peripheral derivatives, comics, advertising, and so on, it has opened up two major markets at home and abroad and continuously magnified the influence of comics.

In such a commercial cartoon IP territory, there have been 8000 quick-view platform serialized works have been commercialized income. Among them, the average commercial income of Top10 works on the platform has exceeded 20 million, and there are nearly 400 works with commercial income exceeding 1 million.

In terms of book development, as one of the largest producers of comic books in China, it has built a mature and stable publishing system, publishing more than 380 paper books in cooperation with nearly 50 publishing partners at home and abroad, serving cartoonists and ensuring a first print volume of more than 13 million copies. Take a quick look at the popular comics of physical books in the market is quite best-selling, such as comics "secretly can not hide", "happen to love" signed the first print of more than 1 million copies, "exciting" comic book total sales of more than 800000 copies.

What is more noteworthy is that the fast-reading book business is still growing at a high speed, which also means that the market share of comic book publishing continues to increase. In 2022, the first print volume of comic books on the platform increased by more than 270% over the same period last year, and dozens of paper books have been released to more than a dozen countries and regions, including Japan, Vietnam, Thailand, Italy, France, Germany, Russia and so on.

In addition to comic book reading, Quick look also completes the leap from 0 to 1 through the two forms of independent and authorized development around the comic book, providing fans with richer experience and deeper companionship. meanwhile. In view of the new scenes and new terminals in young people's life, look and explore how to develop comic IP into various kinds of virtual derivative products such as mobile phone themes, software skins, personalized fonts, video ringtones, memes and so on. At present, there are more than 1000 sets of IP virtual derivatives that enrich users' comic life.

In order to further expand the comic book audience, Quick look has also initially established a comic video three-dimensional development structure, including comics, animation, TV dramas, cinema movies and other IP form extension, and promote comics to gradually become a widely recognized source of film and television IP. Among them, there were 29 fast-watching film and television development projects in 2022, with a year-on-year increase of 100%, a record high. including live-action movies adapted from cartoons such as "Giantess also fall in Love", "Poor Father and daughter" and live-action TV dramas adapted from "ex-War", "Sheep in Wolf's clothing" and "unable to be Friends with Girls".

At this press conference, look also announced the PV of the first two homemade animations, "Super Cube" and "the Little annoyance of the Magic Princess", and announced the launch of two homemade live-action skits, "unlovable ta" and "Bad Taste of Beautiful Men". This is a new attempt with high investment and full of risks, and it is also an important embodiment of its long-term principle of commercial development of IP.

In addition, look has been maintaining the development of the international market, so that the international influence of Chinese comics continues to improve. Since the release of the Columbus Project in 2021, more than 500 cartoons have been distributed to 200 countries and regions around the world, and in the process of competing with global comics, fast-reading cartoons have been recognized by a number of international authoritative awards. For example, "South Pavilion" won the 15th Japan International Comics Award Bronze Award. Works such as "I was beaten by boss", "the Theory of Human Evolution" and "Peach and the Book of eschatology" have also been shortlisted for the Italian Romics Best Cartoon Award.

At the same time, these cartoons from the Quick View platform are becoming more and more popular overseas. Judging from the composition of overseas business income, its share of income continues to rise and now accounts for 65% of the total revenue, which shows that Chinese culture is welcomed by overseas users and is willing to pay for it. In addition to the original overseas distribution system, look at the expansion of overseas distribution forms, such as ebook and so on.

The influence of cartoon IP is also creating more brand awareness that does not belong to the two-dimensional circle, which makes it possible that brand advertising revenue in the first half of 2023 increased by 42% year-on-year, a record high. In fact, as the favorite comic platform of post-00 generation, Quick look has become an important position for brand rejuvenation marketing. First-tier brands in various fields, such as GUCCI, BVLGARI, Calvin Klein, Estée Lauder, Sony, Samsung, Canon, Tmall, JD.com, Watsons, Mengniu, Wa, Yoledo and so on, have reached different forms of business cooperation with Quick look and its popular comics IP.

"We hope to work with creators to build more business models and work together to open up China's comic book market," Chen said in her opening speech. And this also brings a quick look at one of the next most important goals-to become an ace broker in the Chinese comic book industry and to create a work of world-class influence.

Layout AIGC, look to continue to lead the industry innovation

In addition to polishing works and opening up new markets, look at this conference also shows the thinking, exploration and confidence of the industry that will implement new technology empowerment. This is also the first time that Kuaiwang has shared its AIGC layout since the establishment of the AIGC Division was announced in April this year.

In fact, since its inception in 2014, Quick look has always persisted in promoting the innovation of the comic book industry, successively promoting tidiness into the mainstream, leading the industry into the mobile Internet era, and launching comic series on a large scale to accelerate comic video.

And as early as 2019, the "Magic Brush Ma Liang" project was announced for the first time, and strategic cooperation was reached with Harbin Institute of Technology and Southern University of Science and Technology respectively to explore ways to integrate AI with the comic industry, including AI to help creators complete the research and development of auxiliary creative tools such as automatic painting, style transfer and line draft optimization. And large-scale application of AI capabilities in Quick View App page intelligent turn to diffuse, cartoon intelligent automatic reading, intelligent on-screen comments and other scenes to enhance the user reading experience.

With the rapid development of the capabilities of many large models, such as text diagrams, big languages and so on, AIGC technology has ushered in a big bang. Under such a trend of the times, Quick look, as a leader of innovation in the industry, hopes that cartoonists can also benefit from it.

"after constant polishing and reflection, we believe that AIGC can provide industry value from two dimensions: enhancing user experience and expanding content production capacity," said Li Chao, AI technology sharing officer, at the press conference. Specifically, user experience includes reading experience, auditory experience and visual experience, and capacity expansion is through ways to assist creators to improve content production efficiency, both of which can be achieved through the introduction of new technology. and will eventually create new business value for the industry.

Therefore, combined with a great deal of experience in the incubation, creation, operation and development of comics after years of deep ploughing, as well as the accumulation of research and development of AI applications in the past few years, we can see that now we have officially started a new technology stage of building an AIGC capability platform based on a large multi-modal model, and have begun to explore specific implementation paths.

Taking the AI integrated whole process aided creation digital workbench created by Quick look as an example, it can help creators find inspiration and creativity, assist writers, and realize automatic coloring, role changing, creating personalized sound for characters, facial dynamic effects that make character images "live", head / body rotation, breathing details, etc., starting from text, picture, sound, visual model, etc. Liberate creators from meaningless labor, so as to improve productivity, and through richer experience to improve the efficiency of cartoon dissemination and operation.

Take a quick look, with the landing of AIGC, in the current increasingly rich ways of pan-entertainment, the competitiveness of the cartoon itself will be greatly improved, which is also the new situation that Quick hopes to bring to the industry through new technology.

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