Having seen "Batman of Shanghai" quite some time ago, I had always wanted to know which studio it was that had worked on it (Seeing as no credits were shown after the end of the 3 part short), I was fortunate enough to find a related video on youtube that they had also worked on being "Kung Fu Cooking Girls", I found a few names but I still wasn't all that sure that it was same studio that had worked on the Batman short... I was only able to get a proper confirmation a couple of days back when one of my favorite animators mentioned them on Tumblr.
Wolf Smoke Studio was abounded in 2006 by Cloud Yang and Clover Xie, their main objective being the production of high quality 2D hand-drawn animations, having seen a few of the animations, they clearly have an appealingly distinct style that has been positively recognized by the animation industry.
While it might seem like typical anime stuff to most, aside from the 'anime' expressions being used now and then, Wolf Smoke Studio really has their own unique look for their animations (Which makes me want to go out and look for more chinese animations and show that they are different from japanese animations, same goes for korean animations actually). Having a slightly sketchy art style, it is also very reminiscent to the Capcom game "Okami", especially when a calligraphy brush streak effect is being used to enhance the dynamic fight scenes in the Batman short:
Warning, some chinese vulgarities and ultra boob dynamics:
It is interesting to see how the characters and props are simplified so much while still props were incredibly detailed in comparison, such as the cardboard cut out of the petite martial artist, that was humorously placed right beside her for the obvious contrast.
The key frames were first done paper with a vector software (Illustrator or Flash perhaps? They didn't really say which one, and I heard that Illustrator has actually been used for quite a few animation projects so you can't knock out that possibility) used for the in between frames and coloring. It is apparently the first time this studio had done an animation in this method, with over 4000 key frames and 10000 in between frames.
The studio is most definitely skilled in animating epic fight sequences, it would be fantastic to see them working on a proper series for Cartoon Network, in fact, a DC series (I really wished they had serialized Batman in Shanghai, and so do many others) animated by them would be the best thing ever! It does't have to be Batman (Though that would be great), I just wanted to see them get commissioned for a long term project!
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