Poster of Coco, whose major creators will participate in this year's festival. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Inspired by the Mexican Day of the Dead festival, Coco crushed Pixar Animation's previous box-office records to become the studio's top-grossing movie in China.

The animated biography examining Vincent van Gogh's complex life and his unusual death, Loving Vincent, was nominated for best animated feature both at the Golden Globe Awards and the Academy Awards this year.

Blade Runner 2049, an acclaimed sequel to Ridley Scott's 1982 sci-fi masterpiece, won the best cinematography award at the year's Oscars. The movie's visual effects creator Mike Stillwell will also be attending the festival, according to Zhu Xiaoting, an international liaison officer with the festival's exhibition office.

She says the filmmakers will share their experience in master classes on April 27 and 28, and the two animators behind Loving Vincent will create a painting of 4 meters long by 2 meters wide for local people.

Hiroyuki Ito, the creator of Japan's digital pop idol Hatsune Miku and chief executive officer of Crypton Future Media will also join the festival.

A barometer of the festival's popularity, the Golden Monkey King Award－the festival's top honor－has so far received more than 600 submissions, including the Irish animated hit The Breadwinner, which was nominated for best animated feature at this year's Oscars, and the Chinese blockbuster Boonie Bears: The Big Shrink, which grossed more than 600 million yuan earlier this year.

For domestic animation producers, the Hangzhou festival is also a good platform to meet with overseas industry players.

More than 80 broadcasters and distributors, as well as around 1,500 companies with nearly 170 franchises of animated productions or games, have submitted to join the festival's trade market.

Such franchises include French video game publisher Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed, which fictionalizes the rivalry between two ancient secret societies, and The King's Avatar, a popular Chinese online comic series about a group of genius game players.

A summit will also be held to discuss how to build the brand of an influential animation event, gathering together the heads of more than 10 top animation festivals, such as the Annecy International Animated Film Festival in France, and the Ottawa International Animation Festival.

Coinciding with the Xiajiang village event on March 24, the China Comic and Animation Museum in Hangzhou has unveiled its collection of historical animation and cartoon pieces gathered from all around the world toward the end of the festival.

So far, the 30,000-square-meter museum nestled in Baima Lake Animation Square, the main venue for the festival, has received more than 1,600 display submissions, including a monkey-themed painting by the pioneering animator Wan Laiming, the set drafts of 1937 Disney movie Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and some celluloid sheets of the iconic Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck animated series produced in the 1950s.