独立的文化生产和製作，不论是电影还是动画，这类社会、文化、或政治上的另类文化产物的出现，在当今已是一个世界性的普遍现象。儘管香港的文化政策和工业组态均不大鼓励独立动画的发展， 但由於来自教育等方面的因素，加上数字图像和动画製作工具及在线的发佈平台的出现，也在本地和其他地区的动画比赛、动画节的带动和刺激下，使独立动画的生产和製作在近年来出现了明顕的增长。
独立动画製作人了解到如果他们要享受相对较高的创作自由，便需要解除各种来自商业动画製作团队的管理和束搏，於是他们尝试放弃获取商业项目的利润，取而代之通过其他渠道自筹资金进行独立製作。有些独立的动画艺术家试图通过使用各种策略， 製作出在文化内容上与主流动漫产业存在很大差异的动画作品，并期望为自己的审美体系提供合法性和影响力。 独立动画的创作者认为他们有权利通过动画作品表达其“独立精神”，即在不受外在因素所控制或左右的情况下，创作者寻求表达个人的想法和信念、不同的美学观等。作品反咉创作者的思想和个人体验、对社会的身份认同、对社会现象的批判、甚至藉着创作替边缘群体发声。独立的文化生产（如电影和动画） 很多时也是一些艺术家们表达对主流娱乐产业的生产方法和传播平台的不满，他们於是尝试寻求其他的手段来生产及传播自己创作的影像，挑战主流的动画生产方式和传播系统。
本文主要通过深入的采访和观察，以一些香港动画人及其独立动画作为案例，研究和分析当代中国独立动画艺术的独立性、独立动画创作的政治、和动画人所采取的生存策略。在主流与非主流体系之间，动画从业者不断寻找更多的资金来源，努力寻求新的策略来生产另类文化作品，以造就独立创作的自由空间和可能性。

Independent, often socially, culturally, and/or politically alternative cultural production is a worldwide phenomenon today. Despite the cultural policies and industrial configuration of Hong Kong do not significantly encourage the growth of independent animation, there has been growth in this sector nonetheless, spurred especially by a combination of formal and informal educational initiatives, local and regional festival activities and competitions, the newly emerged digital image-making tools, and online distribution platforms.
Conventionally, independent animators understand that in exchange for the usually project-based paycheck offered by the commercial industry, they enjoy a comparatively higher level of creative freedom and autonomy. This is partly due to the usually self-financed source of funding, but mostly because they are often free from the different kinds of team-based managerial constraints that face commercial animators. Some independent animation artists seek to challenge the system by using strategies such as "cultural differentiation" and by creating formal and/or content-based alternatives to those of the mainstream animation industry in order to stake a claim for the legitimacy of their own aesthetic systems and social meanings. So, independent practitioners have the opportunity to express their "independent spirit" or vision, as they seek to have a creative space for individual expression of personal ideas or beliefs, their different social and professional identities, different aesthetic outlooks, and sometimes even the alternative voice of the marginalized groups. The existence of independent cultural production (such as films and animation) is manifested in the ways in which some artists who are not comfortable working within the mainstream entertainment industry attempt to reinvent the wheel by seeking other means to produce and platforms to disseminate their own images.
In this paper, case studies of some Hong Kong animation work will be critically examined, which help to explain the politics of independent animation in Hong Kong and the kinds of strategies these independent animation practitioners incorporate in order to create and maintain a sufficient creative space. Through mainly ethnographic research and in-depth interviews, the findings of this research show that independently made animations are aesthetically and expressively heterogeneous, and that the survival strategies adopted by animators varies, ranging from taking up the role of a freelancer, actively running a studio or company, accepting artist-in-residency opportunities, and doing more personal work on the side while employed either within the commercial field or in the educational sector at the secondary and tertiary levels. And all of these operators are on a continuous search for additional funding sources. Looking for the possibility of independent creation between the gaps in systems of formal and informal regulation, these animation practitioners seek new strategies to work around and through the mainstream media in order to express relatively unfamiliar themes, ideas and audiovisual tropes.