ART Licensing (CEO Yongsoo Lee) attended ‘Gwangju ACE Fair 2022’, which was held for 4 days from Sept 22nd (Thurs) to the 25th (Sun) at KimDaejung Convention Center in Gwangju.
ART Licensing is a company that handles content licensing for artists and companies that create content like webtoons or animations. In addition to character related design work like character agency and manual development, and product design, they provide consulting services that cover animation investment and productization.
ART Licensing showcased ‘Ark Duck Family’, which was produced with their own independent IP (Intellectual Property). The content develops around the 3 main characters of ‘King’, a character based on the emperor penguin, ‘Duck’, a duck character, and ‘Woong’, a panda character.
developed from the idea of ‘Why isn’t there a contest between characters?’, and it depicts the Ark Duck Family participating in a K-Pop audition. Short animations are made in-house based on this concept.
In particular, Woong, a panda character with a dumpling head, is garnering popularity in China, and is actively collaborating with famous local artists. The company explained that it is drawing a good response from the market in Korea, with it being produced as an item on Hanbit Soft’s Audition Online being such an example.
Yongsoo Lee, CEO of ART Licensing, said that, “By introducing Ark Duck Family, which is content produced in-house, we seek to not only promote the work, but to also show our independent IP producing technical capabilities and planning capabilities,” and revealed their reason for attending the exhibition, saying, “As we seek to go beyond the Chinese and Thai markets, where Ark Duck Family already entered, and expand its influence into the Southeast Asian region, we have had multiple meetings with local buyers.”
He went on to say, “Our goal is to grow Ark Duck Family into IP that can compete for the top spot within Asia, by making it firmly self-sufficient. In addition to an original animation series, we are leaving all potential avenues open, including merchandising (MD), content expansion, and collaboration, as we focus on expanding our company’s capacities.”
Gwangju ACE Fair 2022 is a comprehensive content exhibition where you can see all categories of content licensing, including AI, metaverse, VR/AR, games, broadcasts, animations, and characters, in one place. It was hosted by the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism and the metropolitan city of Gwangju, and overseen by the KimDaejung Convention Center, Gwangju Information & Content Agency, Gwangju Institute of Design Promotion, Korea Cable TV Association, and the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency (KOTRA). In addition to the ‘Web Animation Festival (WAF)’ hosted by the Gwangju Information & Content Agency, there were other diverse additional events showcased throughout the exhibition period, such as the New Illustrator Discovery Contest with NC Soft, board game competition and experiencing event, cosplay festival, the 15th Youth Broadcasting Content Contest, and animation premiere.
