Vietnam’s animation promotes national cultural values

The Vietnamese animation industry has undergone 65 years of development. Alongside long-established names, many new creators have recently entered the field, helping to innovate and diversify animation content.

Technological developments have also stimulated creative thinking, perspectives and implementation approaches among young teams to utilise and promote national cultural values.

In just the past few years, a series of episodic animated films created by Vietnamese creative teams have debuted and conquered international markets. Along with these are animated films adapted from Vietnamese folk culture stories, professionally produced to spread Vietnam’s image to global audiences.

Wolfoo, the famous made-in-Vietnam animated character produced and owned by Sconnect Vietnam, has been released to the public on cross-border digital platforms since 2018, quickly winning over children in many countries, including markets that set very high standards for cultural and educational products.

Subsequently, Wolfoo has achieved remarkable success, earning billions of views monthly on social media. The series has been produced in various versions suitable for different platforms and translated into 20 languages.

There are about 4,700 short episodes on YouTube (3-5 minutes each) and hundreds of 10-15-minute episodes on TV and digital platforms in many countries. And in 2023, a 100-minute theatrical version was released.

The series is popular because it combines entertaining content with life skills education for young children. Each episode is a small lesson to help children develop essential skills such as courage, gratitude, kindness and eagerness to learn.

It wasn’t until around 2022 that Vietnamese audiences discovered that this animated series was entirely produced by Vietnamese creators, despite taking the global stage by storm. Wolfoo has been highly praised for its quality, considered on par with products from developed countries, and is often mistakenly thought to have originated from the US or Europe.

Ta Manh Hoang, founder and CEO of Sconnect, shared that from the beginning, the team has always grappled with how to incorporate the finest Vietnamese elements into their products and establish their position in the international animation market through national cultural identity.

“However, it isn’t necessary to include Vietnamese customs, costumes or settings in the film to express Vietnamese culture. I believe that when a 100% made-in-Vietnam product achieves widespread influence, it serves as important evidence for international friends to recognise the capabilities, qualities and skills of Vietnamese people. Taking Vietnamese names far and wide is already a step forward in putting Vietnam on the international animation map”, emphasised Hoang.

Wolfoo and many other Sconnect animated characters were developed based on research in their initial target market, the US, a country with a long history in animation and famous for its highly competitive market. This fierce competition provided an opportunity for Sconnect’s animation team to learn, mature and develop rapidly.

Thanks to the experience accumulated in such challenging major markets, after ten years, Sconnect has developed standards and can train personnel to produce high-quality animation. Since 2022, Sconnect has collaborated with other animation companies to leverage strengths and find new directions.

After nearly a decade of elevating Vietnamese animation, Sconnect collaborated with Alpha Studio to produce and premiere their first 3D animated series in August 2023. The world in “Young Trang Quynh’s Adventures” is built around Trang Quynh - a folk character famous for tales of his exceptional wisdom, set against the backdrop of a typical Northern Vietnamese village with its banyan tree, pier and communal house yard, creating a delicate intersection between mythological elements and everyday life.

The series is produced using 3D technology, which helps create depth in images and provides a more vivid experience compared to 2D animation. The series is expected to include 450 episodes, with over 60 already released, including many special episodes tied to traditional Vietnamese festivals.

Besides releasing versions on digital platforms, Sconnect and Alpha Studio plan to produce a theatrical film. This past July, the Trang Quynh series was honoured with the “Most Popular Vietnamese Animation” award at the Da Nang Asian Film Festival (DANAFF) 2024.

In addition to the above films, Sconnect’s development strategy includes many major production projects that can attract investment and production resources from animation companies nationwide. Sconnect’s aspiration is for Vietnamese companies to join forces, telling Vietnamese stories through Vietnamese artistry and spreading them to friends across five continents.

Notably, Vietnam has thousands of craft villages highly regarded for their cultural value and artistic quality. These numbers represent an abundant internal strength from the artisans' skilful hands and inspire Sconnect to choose stop motion as the next step in their content creation journey.

Unlike most computer-based animation technologies, stop motion’s distinctive feature is that the footage is created from thousands of photographs, requiring all sets, props and characters to be handmade. This technology has become a fertile ground for maximising creative potential and meticulousness - the strengths of Vietnam’s human resources.

NDO