A shortage in high-end animation talents is holding up the progress of its production projects, Qingdao's Guangdian Animation Company said. The company signed a three-year partnership agreement with Hong Kong's Bingo Group in November.

Guangdian's marketing director Liang Yun said the company needs as many animation talents as possible because it plans to produce at least three cartoon series as well as three animated feature films in the coming three years.

Guangdian is not the only company with this problem. More than 10 animations, comic and game companies posted job vacancies while attending the Qingdao Animation Arts Festival 2011 in October.

Wang Hengjin, general manager of Qingdao's 4-D Space animation company, also discussed the difficulty to find sufficient animation makers to handle the workload of numerous projects expected to launch.

Wang said it was a great pity that the company was unable to take on more projects because of labor shortage, and it badly needed to employ more cartoon makers to move forward.

Qingdao's animation workforce is showing visible structural weaknesses at the moment, Qingdao's animation association vice director Pang Yusheng said. The number of animation increases but few of them excel at their posts.

Pang said animation makers trained in the city's emerging college animation programs are far from enough to fill the vacancies in local studios. He said the animation companies have started to cultivate talents themselves.

In 4-D Space, 80 percent of the employees in animation receive training from the company. Its general manager said anyone who was creative and had great ideas was able to become a qualified animation maker even if he or she only had a high school education.

Meanwhile, the municipal human resource and social welfare officials are considering to aid in a local animator association's proposal to cultivate an animation talent pool, Pang said.