Tokyo - Young Japanese animation artists are hit hard by the global economic crisis, despite growing international interest in animated movies from the country, an industry representative said Wednesday.

"Many cannot find the financial means to create their own works. Some do not have a business future," said Kei Shozuzawa of THINK Corporation, a Japanise animation company at the outset of the Tokyo International Anime Fair, one of the world's largest animation industry events.

Many artists and small companies were facing difficult work conditions and lower incomes and often had to depend on contract work like ads from television stations, Shozuzawa told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

However, those clients were cutting their budgets in times of the crisis, forcing the studios and artists to produce their products cheaper, he said. Furthermore, competition from China and South-East Asia was eating into the business.

In what organizers call an "epoch-making event" 14 Chinese studios were present for the first time at the fair.

This year, 225 exhibitors are represented at the fair, which runs to Saturday. The organizers expect 130,000 visitors on the two days it is open to the public.

While Tokyo's municipal government and THINK started a project supporting about a dozen young artists to help them access foreign markets like Europe, the yen's rise against the euro made these plans more difficult, Shozuzawa said.

However, the crisis was also a chance to the industry, as people spent more time at home in front of the television, which could lead to increasing consumption of animated movies.

The animated world also provided an escape from reality, he said. The recession was also expected to have its impact on the contents of animated films, like environment issues did in the past, Shozuzawa said. (dpa)