An increasing number of home-spun creations have played a crucial role in pushing forward China's flourishing animation industry. But recent surveys show it's still difficult for a majority of original works to lure the book lovers to buy domestic comic books or drag audiences into cinemas.

The lack of original works has become a chronic problem for China's animation industry.

A shortage of good stories and irresponsible duplications have slowed investment and left fans disappointed.

The thirst to make quick money made some production companies drastically retrench their cost in pre-production preparation and market investigation.

Zang Zhixin, general manager of animation company, said, "Because of the lack of capital, many production companies have set their eyes solely on the production, ignoring its pre and post stages."

In countries with an advanced animation industry, it usually takes more than half of the total production period to develop the story in an animated feature film.

The situation has been worsened by rampant piracy, which cuts off the industry chain.

The total production value for the global animation industry is now 40 billion US dollars. But the output of its associated products can mount up to 400 billion dollars.

Piracy has kept production companies in a constant state of dire financial straits.