Creating magic on screen

Mark Osborne, director of Kung Fu Panda and The Little Prince, gives a speech at the recently concluded 12th China International Cartoon & Animation Festival in Hangzhou.[Photo by Xu Fan/China Daily]

Chinese fans first encountered Mark Osborne with Kung Fu Panda, which became the first animation film to earn more than 180 million yuan in the country. Nearly a decade later, the American animator is still looking for something new. Xu Fan reports.

With two Oscar-nominated films and a hit animation movie in China under his belt, Mark Osborne can easily stay in his comfort zone.

But the New Jersey-born animator wants to achieve more.

He wants to create "something new and different", he tells China Daily during a recent visit to Hangzhou in East China's Zhejiang province.

Osborne was there with Disney Animation Studios' president Andrew Millstein and Oriental DreamWorks' chief creative officer Melissa Cobb, to give a class to Chinese animation film professionals at the just-ended 12th China International Cartoon & Animation Festival.

Chinese fans first encountered the 45-year-old director and writer through the 2008 smash hit Kung Fu Panda, which was the first animation film to earn more than 180 million yuan ($27.7 million) in China, and top the animation box-office charts that year.

Osborne says DreamWorks Pictures' story creators watched Chinese martial arts blockbusters Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Hero to develop panda Po's kung fu skills.

He was in the news again last year for the French animation film The Little Prince, which received critical acclaim for its use of stop-motion and CGI (computer generated imagery).