By Isabel Galwey
The subject of Hong Kong animation has increasingly attracted scholarly attention. Mainstays of Hong Kong animation like McDull have been researched and analyzed in depth; recent Hong Kong-produced feature animations including Sherlock Holmes and the Great Escape (2019) and no.7 Cherry Lane (2019) have received international acclaim; and this year’s Maureen Furniss prize went to an essay on Hong Kong animation. Although this recent increase in research output has pushed back the frontiers of the field, Hong Kong animation studies was already underway in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s. Frame After Frame (Xianggang donghua youduan gu, Hong Kong Film Archive, 2006), edited by Winnie Fu, is one such key source for those interested in Hong Kong animation studies. The book was put together as a companion to a 2006 exhibition of the same name, which comprised a survey of Hong Kong animation history from the mid-20th century until the 2000’s. The book includes essays and interviews from some of Hong Kong’s pioneering animators, including Neco Lo, Dick Wong, and Keeto Lam, as well as analysis by critics and scholars such as Wiliam Chung and Wong Kee-chee. The volume is bilingual—each chapter appears in both English and Chinese—and illustrated with stills, photographs and ephemera spanning the decades of Hong Kong’s animation history.
Frame After Frame begins with an introduction by Winnie Fu, describing the process of collecting the sources for this volume, and giving a precis of Hong Kong animation history, which is then developed by Keeto Lam in his chapter “a brief sketch of the development of Hong Kong animation.” He traces the origins of Hong Kong animation as a divergent path from Chinese animation, starting with the Wan brothers’ experiments with animation during their sojourn in Hong Kong in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s. According to Lam’s account, the earliest Hong Kong animations were special effects and title sequences in live-action films. Though this account misses some early Hong Kong animations such as Zhang Guangyu’s Bell Boy, it summarizes many of the major works of Hong Kong animation, including independent, commercial and feature animations, and comments on trends such as the continuous rise of digital animation.
The second section, “Commercial Animation”, offers an overview of animation created for commercials in Hong Kong. It enumerates the key companies and individuals which pioneered in this field and provides examples of well-known animated commercials. It is followed by an essay by Dick Wong, one of Hong Kong’s animation pioneers who carved out a career for himself in animation at a time when there was little to no institutional or economic support for such a profession. Partly self-taught, partly learning from other professionals on the job, Wong described himself as a life-long lover of animation, and especially of Disney classics like Fantasia. Together with Neco Lo’s later account of Hong Kong independent animation, Wong’s reminiscences reveal the challenges faced by Hong Kong’s early animators, giving new significance to their achievements.
The third section of the book, on independent animation, is a first-hand account by Neco Lo. In addition to being a prolific animator, Lo has been involved in many events and programmes fostering the development of Hong Kong animation, as well as writing and speaking extensively on the subject. In his contribution to this volume, Lo details the origins of his own interest in animation. He describes the early days of Hong Kong animation clubs and grassroots organisations like “Single Frame,” and Hong Kong independent animation’s international links, most notably with Japan. Like Keeto Lam, Lo notes the significance of digital technologies for breathing new life into Hong Kong independent animation, as well as highlighting its links to other creative practices like video art and comics. The “Independent Animation” section concludes with a critical essay by Wong Kee-chee, entitled “Letters to One’s Sensibility,” comparing and contrasting the animation styles of Neco Lo and Dick Wong. Wong Kee-chee suggests that short animations of the type produced by these two pioneering animators can be enjoyed as “personal letters,” revealing the animation artists’ preoccupations and sensibilities. Wong’s essay is poignant and eloquently written, providing an in-depth analysis of Hong Kong animation which is somewhat lacking in the rest of the volume.
The fourth section, “Television Animation,” is also written by Neco Lo, who worked in television animation as well as on independent works. He describes the great variety of responsibilities which were undertaken by animators at Radio Television Hong Kong (RTHK), ranging from infographics and titles to children’s programming. He describes the skill of RTHK’s special effects, animation and editorial team, and their experimentation with different techniques over the years. One of the most interesting aspects of this section is Lo’s recollections of Wu Qiang from the Shanghai Animation Film Studio (SAFS), and the informal seminars on animation technique he provided for his coworkers. Lo also describes the founding of Jade Animation in Shenzhen in the late 1990’s, which supplemented the technical and human resources available to Hong Kong, and brought Hong Kong and Mainland TV animation closer together. Perhaps this section would have benefited from a greater diversity of perspectives. For example, it would have been interesting to hear from Mabel Cheung, who directed the animated segments of children’s animation which Lo discusses, or some of the other animators involved, such as Flora Chan or Agnes Leung.
The final section of the book is entitled “Movie Animation,” and contains first-hand accounts and critical analyses of some of Hong Kong’s most well-known feature animations. The section “Old Master Q Films,” by Andy Liu, offers a history of Old Master Q’s evolution from comic strip, to live-action films, a trio of feature animations, a VHS series and a combined live-action/CGI feature. Liu describes the specificities of each medium, and the challenges which Wu Sau-yee and his team faced when adapting the comics to animation format. Liu emphasises the transnationality of the production process, involving many artists from Taiwan, as well as pointing out that despite the ostensible feature film format, the storytelling style remained somewhat episodic.
“The Motley Crew of McDull Animation,” written by My Life as McDull’s director Toe Yuen, is one of the most interesting segments of the book, offering a glimpse into the experimental “Black Box” of McDull’s early production. Toe, a natural storyteller, shares much interesting technical information about McDull’s animation process, woven in among entertaining anecdotes about the cast, crew, and conditions of the film’s inception and release. In the following section, “My Life as McDull: Typical Hong Kong Animation and Character Design”, William Cheung notes astutely that in McDull “space is no longer just a setting, but a protagonist in its own right.” He observes that what makes the McDull films unique is that “they show the lives of the Hong Kong people, their living environment and their collective memory.” He also emphasises the animations’ multigenerational appeal, and the eloquence with which McDull’s gently ironic humour and meandering narratives express certain “essential attributes of Hong Kong culture.”
The final chapter is a more general survey of Hong Kong animated feature history, by Yu Man-fai, himself a veteran animator. Yu includes another write-up of Old Master Q and McDull, as well as lesser-known Hong Kong animated features like Dragon Blade, Tonki Bear and The Clash of the Storm Rider. He also mentions the (at that time) upcoming feature The Secret of the Magic Gourd, which combined live action and computer animation, and was created as a collaboration between Disney and Centro Digital Pictures. (The Secret of the Magic Gourd was subsequently released in 2007.) The book concludes with several more excerpts from interviews with animators including Roger Ho, Toe Yuen, and Keeto Lam.
As the above summary of Frame After Frame’s content indicates, the edited volume gives an excellent overview of the state of Hong Kong animation at the time it was published. In particular, the first-hand accounts of animation production, given by Hong Kong animators themselves, are immensely valuable. Although Hong Kong animation has of course progressed considerably in the nearly twenty years since Frame After Frame’s publication, the book remains vital reading for anyone interested in understanding the origins and context of Hong Kong contemporary animation. Frame After Frame also highlights the ways in which Hong Kong animation is inextricably linked to other areas of Hong Kong’s entertainment industry and visual culture: for example, the Old Master Q and McDull animations’ origins in comics, and Hong Kong independent animation’s important connections with Hong Kong video art.
If there is one area in which Frame After Frame could be improved, it would perhaps be the diversity of animators’ voices which it amplified. For example, there are no first-hand accounts from Hong Kong woman animators at all, despite the contributions of others revealing that women were active in independent, TV and feature animation. (Readers interested in Hong Kong’s women animators may wish to read Neco Lo’s Hong Kong Animation Newcomers, which includes interviews with several Hong Kong women animators, or the interview on this site with Hong Kong animators Angela Wong and Anita So.) Although the volume’s primary goal is to provide a general survey of Hong Kong animation history, it benefits from the two critical engagements by Wong Kee-chee and William Cheung, and would potentially have been enriched by more such analysis, helping readers to understand the artistic significance of Hong Kong animation. Aside from this, although there are some minor typos and translation errors, they do not detract from the overall value of the interviews and critical analysis.
Winnie Fu’s Frame After Frame is an excellent and highly accessible introduction to Hong Kong animation, and the challenges faced by Hong Kong animators over the decades, as well as their achievements. As Hong Kong animation attracts more scholarly attention, this book lays a strong foundation for further study in this field.
Bio:
Isabel Galwey is an animator and researcher. She completed a foundation diploma in art and design at Leeds Arts University, followed by a BA at University of Oxford, where she studied Chinese, and an MPhil at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, where she researched the digital turn in Hong Kong animation, transmedia connections between different areas of the Hong Kong creative industries, and the significance of nonnarrative elements as part of animation’s medium specificity. She has been involved in numerous short film and animation projects. She will begin to pursue her PhD degree in Chinese animation and film studies at the University of Oxford in fall 2025.
