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Wang Film Productions - TV Tropes

  • ️Tue Sep 02 2014

Wang Film Productions (Creator)

Wang Film Productions:
Serving practically everyone under the face of the sun since 1978.

Wang Film Productions Co., Ltd. (also known as Cuckoo's Nest Studio and Hong Guang Animation) is a Taiwanese animation studio co-founded in 1978 by former Hanna-Barbera employees James Wang and Jerry Smith as a means for the company to outsource their animation to back when the technique was still relatively uncommon at the time. Many employees from Chungwha Cartoon, as well as employees from Ying Ren Cartoon and Shang Shang came to work for Wang. Don Patterson was brought on board as a trainer. The company started with 50 employees but soon had 300.

Since its founding, Wang has worked with and/or for several companies like Warner Bros.*, Disney, Nelvana, Klasky-Csupo, Film Roman, Universal, Cookie Jar, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Animation, Kennedy Cartoons, Toon City and Studio Pierrot (among others). Through them, they have done animation for shows and movies made in the North America, Europe and Asia.

Their main claim to fame, though, is being used by a large number of shows. The Other Wiki, in fact, has a list of their works about a mile long. The works featured below are just scraping the surface.

Hong Ying is generally considered an offshoot, having started out getting extra Wang work.

The company also has satellite studios in Indonesia (PT Asiana Wang), Thailand (Thai Wang Film Productions Co., Ltd.) and China (Hong Guang Animation (Suzhou) Co., Ltd., established in Zhuhai in 1990 as Speedy Victory Animation Co., Ltd.). Their credits are listed here for obvious reasons.

In 1988, many long-time employees of Wang, such as Sam Wang, split off and started their own studio, Morning Sun.

In 1998, the studio would team up with CGI studio CGCG Inc in a strategic partnership deal. This deal would eventually end sometime in the mid to late 2000s.

In 2014, some long-time employees of Wang, such as Bunis Yang and Vincent Liu, split off and started their own studio, BV Animation Studio. It has worked on Curious George 3: Back to the Jungle (with Tycoon Animation), The Land Before Time XIV: Journey of the Brave and Bamse and the Thief City.

At some point in The New '10s, Wang was acquired by a company called Brilliant Pictures Group, which continues to operate the studio under the name WangFilm Animation Studio.

Compare (and contrast) AKOM, TMS Entertainment, Toei Animation, Fil-Cartoons, Saerom, Sunwoo Entertainment, Dong Woo Animation, Synergy Animation, Hanho Heung-Up, Rough Draft Studios, Nakamura Productions, Daewon Media and the aforementioned Toon City and Kennedy Cartoons. Their partners for many of the shows listed below.

Side note - the amount of work Wang did is staggering. The following folders consist of an (almost) complete filmography.

open/close all folders 

Shows and TV Specials 

Disney

Hanna-Barbera

Warner Bros.

Other

Movies & shorts 

Confirmed

Unconfirmed

Tropes Associated with Wang include 

  • All-CGI Cartoon: The Bionicle films, Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and Donkey Kong Country.
  • Animation Bump: Fairly often, particularly in The Brave Little Toaster and Animaniacs.
  • Animesque: Some of their works (W.I.T.C.H. and Winx Club, mostly). The fact that they worked on the sequel series to both Willy Fog & Dogtanian, and Yu Yu Hakusho: Poltergeist Report adds to this.
  • Art Shift: In the early '90s, Hanna-Barbera sent their innovative (for its time) computer system overseas to Wang (back when they still had some ownership in the company), and they used it on some productions for H-B (such as Yo Yogi!, 2 Stupid Dogs and Scooby-Doo in Arabian Nights) and outside of them (such as a couple of Chucklewood Critters specials, the 1994 Fantastic Four series, certain episodes of The Pink Panther, the "Cheesefist" segment on The Ren and Stimpy Show, Willy Fog, and late season 1 through season 2 of Tales From the Cryptkeeper). They generally appeared more bright and garish than their product using traditional cel animation, and it didn't help that the computer system was quite dated by this time, and it often showed (especially in Arabian Nights and Tales From the Cryptkeeper). By the late '90s, Wang replaced it with a more up-to-date computer system for doing digital coloring.
  • Depending on the Artist: Usually noticeable when working on a show with multiple other studios attached during the 90s like Tiny Toons or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, as their animation tended to be far more loose, cartoonish and bouncy than other companies.
  • Deranged Animation: There are several shows containing this, but Courage the Cowardly Dog is the best example.
  • I Have Many Names: As mentioned at the top of the page.
  • International Co Production: Inspector Gadget, Transformers: Go-Bots, The Bionicle films, The Brave Little Toaster and most of their Hanna-Barbara work.
  • Lazy Artist: Parodied in the Garfield & Friends segment "Mistakes Will Happen". Mark Evanier would later go on to admit that it took a good amount of time to get Wang to actually do the errors deliberately.
  • Medium Blending: Featured in the later The Land Before Time sequels. Also present in TRON, Courage, Winx Club, The Pagemaster, Ferngully, Bionicle 3 (Albeit as an effects screw-up), and Phineas and Ferb, among other titles.
  • Production Posse:
    • Hanna-Barbera, since they basically helped create the studio in the first place. H-B extensively used the studio throughout the late '70s to the mid-90s, though they gradually phased them out in favor of Fil-Cartoons, Rough Draft Studios and others.
    • Nelvana has used both the main studio and Hong Guang on several of their projects.*
    • Disney has also used the company heavily since the 1980s for both film and TV efforts. To put this into perspective: The only Disney animated series where Wang wasn't utilized as an overseas studio have been: The Wuzzles, Adventures Of The Gummi Bears, Pepper Ann, Doug, Recess, House of Mouse, Lloyd in Space, Mickey Mouse Works, The Proud Family, The Buzz on Maggie, Kim Possible, and some of their more recent stuffnote . Every other show has used them.
  • Scenery Porn: Regardless of their animation quality at times, their background art (especially with their work for Disney and Warner Bros.) are some of the better ones to come out of an overseas studio.
  • Signature Style: Their overly cartoony style seen during the latter half of the 80s and throughout the 90s, which can be attributed in part to John Kricfalusi, who during his time on The Jetsons revival "taught them how to animate".
  • Thick-Line Animation: The New Adventures of Beany and Cecil, Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures, and The Replacements. They also went through a period of this during the first season of Tiny Toons. Their work on Ren and Stimpy and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles tended to suffer from this as well.