Character design in Thailand was once the reserve of only a small number of established companies like 2Spot Communication, Vithita Animation and Kantana Group, who, by and large, managed to bring the bulk of their characters, including Bloody Bunny, Biscuit, Unsleep Sheep and Luko to different formats like animated features, games and merchandise.
The recent popularity of the instant messaging app Line and its plethora of stickers, however, has put character creation into the spotlight of other, previously unheard of creator communities.
"The fast growth of the Line sticker sector is driven by the trend that individuals and young creators can work independently and we realise there is more opportunity for character creation than just Line stickers," said Nitipat Somsaman, president of the Thai Animation & Computer Graphics Association (TACGA), who is now in discussion with the Department of International Trade Promotion, the Ministry of Commerce, to expand the Line sticker characters to appear on several other types of products.
Instead of paying a huge amount of money to foreign-licensed companies such as Sanrio and Disney, characters by Thai designers can also make money, he added.
TACGA, meanwhile, has worked with the Culture Ministry to organise character-licensing workshops for character creators, some of which will be selected to join the International Licensing Show in Hong Kong next year where booths are available for new talents to showcase their work.
Nitipat added that the association supports these young creators because, in the long run, they are able to earn steady income from stickers and characters they design. Even though their primary earnings are generated from stickers and some have expanded to a broader range such as on T-shirts and other merchandise at art markets, it's still in a constrained area.
There are thousands of professional Line character creators, and so far TACGA has managed to talk to the majority through the workshops.
"This group of creators are creative, but they have no experience in business and marketing so they can learn more through these character-licensing workshops," Nitipat said, adding that this community, called "Young Creators", are more interested in creating characters instead of working on animation or stories.
"We are also looking into the digital economy, which may support funding to the digital content creators," he added.
Chamnarn Jurajaturasirarat, creator of the Jumbooka series of stickers, the most downloaded Line sticker among Thai creators, is a former office worker at a creative design company. With his experience in comic, cartoon and animation drawing, it was a natural step for Chamnarn to become a Line sticker creator.
Describing the income he has made by designing stickers as "very impressive", he said he is now busy working on the new series of Jumbooka, which is planned to launch soon. Although the first version of Jumbooka was designed solely for the domestic market as the stickers were accompanied by Thai language text, the second version, which incorporated English text, was designed with both the local and international markets in mind.
Chamnarn discovered that his stickers have been downloaded more by foreign users in countries such as Taiwan and Iran, than in Thailand.
"This [popularity of Jumbooka] is probably because my characters express emotions through body language, so it became internationally recognisable and communicable," he said, noting that he will become more than happy if his stickers manage to appear on merchandise.
Last month, Line celebrated the first anniversary of the Line Creators Market — an opportunity for normal everyday people to have a shot at selling their brainchild to Line users worldwide. They also announced the top 10 creator stickers in terms of sales, and the top three were Jumbooka 22nd Century Girl, Tidlom and Momo.
Since the launch of the Line Creators Market in May last year, there are now more than 120,000 sets of creators' stickers on Line's Sticker Shop, and some 200 new stickers introduced in the shop everyday. Additionally, there are more than 40,000 Thai creators who have registered on the Creators Market. The sales revenue of Line stickers worldwide is 2.47 billion baht, with total sales for Thai customers estimated at about 145 million baht and growing.
2Spot managing director Kris Nalamlieng noted that the Thai characters today have a less than 1-2% share of the global market and that it's now possible to increase a proportion of the characters designed by Thais in the area of games or animation, as there are more Thai companies developing characters.
In the meantime, 2Spot Studio has plans to rebrand and relaunch its key characters such as Bloody Bunny and Unsleep Sheep. Every character by 2Spot has merchandise, animation and mobile games and by the end of this year it will open its first character lifestyle shop that sells merchandise.
According to Kris, the popularity of the Line application service has been the catalyst for character design communities to grow because users are always willing to pay for good characters. He also said that Line is another channel that enables creators to distribute their design, yet it is just one tiny part of the global sticker market.
He pointed out that Line stickers are primarily for adults as they mainly focus on communication and dialogue, not as characters associated with brands or products.
Character design for products, meanwhile, must enhance the image of the brand and must fit into the right target group, for example, characters created for a children's toothpaste brand should be an object of admiration for the youth and product characters should also be properly licensed.
"Characters developed from others channels such as movies or animations do not necessarily become successful Line stickers," Kris noted. "Likewise, if characters are successful as a Line sticker series, it does not always mean they will become a successful animated character either."
2Spot Studio is a recognised character designer whose character styles and variety of digital content is available in many countries. Last year, the company won first prize at the Asean Character Award, which was established by the Asean-Japan Centre. The award-winning characters must be those that have already been commercialised and earn income in the market. 2Spot has so far developed more than 20 character sets, over 1,000 products and more than 3,000 pieces of digital content. Some characters designed by 2Spot are:
Bloody Bunny is a new generation of character that is designed to target teens and young adults, both male and female. With vivid graphic appeal and a kid-friendly story, it is spreading throughout Asia. Bloody Bunny is based on a series of animation shorts in which the hero battles evil dolls in a world where both humans and dolls coexist. Starting out as a discarded doll, Bloody Bunny seeks out his owner to learn about his forgotten past.
Biscuit is the most popular 2Spot characters for girls. It is a story of a cat who aspires to become a bakery chef, except that it doesn't really know how to bake. Biscuit and its friends, Green Tea and Cookie P, are always trying to find new ways to make the perfect cake. However, in the end, it is Green Tea and Cookie P who have to taste the barely edible culinary experiment by their friend, and it is not always enjoyable.
Unsleep Sheep is a story of an insomniac sheep who tries to find himself a good night's sleep by any means possible. Unsleep Sheep targets people who find it hard to get up for work or school every morning.
Luko, short for Leukocyte, is the temperamental white blood cell going out to rid the world of all germs. Along side Luko is Spermy, a one-of-a-kind sperm who enthusiastically assists Luko in his heroic acts. Luko and Spermy are intended only for kids who are studying biology.
