Chapter 503: Nezha: The Devil Child Comes into the World

Chapter 503: Nezha: The Devil Child Comes into the World

Chapter 503: Nezha: The Devil Child Comes into the World

Of course, the National Day period in 15 was not just about "The Genting Sky Palace" or "Hello, Madman".

Galaxy Pictures is very clear about the box office potential of "Hello, Madman". After all, it is more like an art film.

So for this holiday, Galaxy Pictures made another arrangement. In the middle of the 7-day National Day holiday, on October 10th, Galaxy Group's animation department, Xingcai Painting House, launched their animated feature film - "Nezha: The Devil Child Comes into the World".

This is Galaxy Group’s second feature-length animated film after The Return of the Great Sage, and it is also Galaxy Group’s third movie universe project after Galaxy Cinematic Universe and Shushan Cinematic Universe.

If "The Lost Tomb" is the negative part of the butterfly effect caused by the time traveler Wang Hao, then "Nezha: The Devil Child Comes into the World" released during the National Day in 2015 is definitely a positive one.

According to established history, the creation of the animated film "Nezha: The Devil Child Comes into the World" was extremely difficult due to the lack of funds, technology and manpower.

However, after the establishment of the Galaxy Group in this world, the technology and talent reserves of China's film and television industry are at least 5 to 6 years ahead of the same period in Wang Hao's previous life.

So when the young animation director named Jiaozi, who had gained some fame in the industry for his excellent debut work "Hit, Hit a Big Watermelon", came to the Galaxy Group with the script and ideas for "Nezha: The Devil Child Comes into the World", Galaxy Group naturally and enthusiastically accepted his small studio.

And long before "The Return of the Great Sage" was released, Wang Hao had mentioned at an internal meeting of the animation department of Galaxy Group the idea of ​​using animation themes to construct an animation universe involving the Chinese mythology system.

Now that Jiaozi has invested and brought with him the creative idea of ​​"Nezha: The Devil Child Comes into the World", this plan has naturally been put on the agenda again.

What happens next is naturally extremely simple. First, we conduct a feasibility study on the project, analyze the current domestic animation film market, the preferences of audiences of different age groups, similar competing products on the market, and whether funds, technology, talents, and other aspects can support the operation of the project?
After such a survey, the answer is naturally affirmative.

Although China's animation film market faces the problem of adults' prejudice against animation, it has gradually gained a large audience as young people of the new era grow up.

Especially for movies aimed at adults, their share of the domestic box office is still rising year by year.

In addition, animation, games, special effects and other technologies are currently intrinsically linked, so there is still room for development in animated films or even animated film universes.

Therefore, the project of "Nezha: The Devil Child Comes into the World" was quickly reviewed and approved and officially launched in 2013 along with "The Monkey King: Hero is Back".

Then the animation department of Galaxy Group was divided into three teams.

One of them provided financial and technical support for the completion of "The Monkey King: Hero is Back", which enabled the film to be successfully released during the 2014 Spring Festival period and won the championship of the Spring Festival box office rankings that year with a total box office of 10.6 billion.

As for the other two teams, one led by Jiaozi quickly started the production of Nezha: The Devil Child Comes into the World, and the other one, based on Nezha: The Devil Child Comes into the World, joined hands with the screenwriter department of Galaxy Group to start designing and finalizing the basic plot outline, characters, environment, forces, etc. for the [Fengshen Animation Movie Universe].

After the successful release of "The Monkey King: Hero is Back", their team also joined the "Nezha: The Devil Child Comes into the World" team. The entire team, including outsourced personnel, has more than 2,000 people involved in the production, which can be said to be at the forefront of domestic animation film production.

Thanks to the strong special effects talent and technical support of Galaxy Group, "Nezha: The Devil Child Comes into the World", which took five years to make in the original timeline, was successfully completed in only three years.

During this process, Galaxy Group once again improved its special effects technology due to the production of this animated film.

In particular, Wang Hao has the insights of later generations and knows that AI plays a huge role in the processing and generation of graphic data.

Although he knows nothing about AI, it doesn't matter. Sometimes scientific research and progress are not afraid of having no direction, but afraid of having no confidence in the future even if they are on the right direction.

Wang Hao is extremely confident in the development potential of AI, so he took some time out to participate in the creation process of "Nezha: The Devil Child Comes into the World" and put forward suggestions on how AI can help with the creation.

To this end, he specially invited experts and professors from several major universities in Beijing, and then cooperated with OPPO and DJI to establish an AI graphics research institute in this direction to conduct in-depth research in related areas.

The initial capital investment of this laboratory alone is enough to make another "Nezha 1".

As for whether anyone in the group company would raise objections to this, that is unlikely.

Because the research on graphic AI can not only benefit animated films, but can also be applied to computer special effects, games, photography, etc. Even the TikTok short video software that Galaxy Group is currently secretly developing, this graphic AI technology can provide certain help.

Anyway, on the project of "Nezha: The Devil Child Comes into the World", with the influence of Galaxy Group and Wang Hao, the quality of the work is undoubtedly 30% better than the original, and the time is shortened by one third.

Therefore, as soon as "Nezha: The Devil Child Comes into the World" was released during the National Day period in 2015, it immediately set off the film market again, seriously squeezing the box office space of "The Lost Tomb" which was released in the same period.

On the first day alone, the box office of "Nezha" exceeded 100 million, becoming the first animated film in Chinese film history to exceed 100 million on the first day.

As soon as this result came out, the call for the "rise of Chinese comics" once again appeared frequently in major news media.

And those media immediately linked it to "The Return of the Great Sage" released last year, and also pointed out the important contributor behind these two animated films, Galaxy Group.

These are naturally the efforts of Galaxy Group in contacting the media. After all, it is the largest film and television culture group company in the country with a mature and complete industrial chain. Galaxy Group has made all-round efforts to promote "Nezha: The Devil Child Comes into the World", so it is not surprising that it has achieved such results.

Long before this animated film was released, promotional advertisements had already been rolled out across the country, even reaching third- and fourth-tier cities.

And one advantage of animated films over live-action films is that they are undoubtedly better operated in terms of peripheral products.

Galaxy Group has found well-known companies to cooperate with them in almost all related books, toys, clothing, stationery, and catering, as long as they can be co-branded with "Nezha 1". For example, McDonald's launched a co-branded meal a few days before the release of "Nezha: The Devil Child Comes into the World", giving away character cards or stickers with the meal.

These co-branding and authorizations alone brought Galaxy Group more than 5000 million in profits before the movie was released.

It can be said that Galaxy Group's film industrialization system has basically achieved results after it matured. Even without the support of the movie universe, any film or television work produced by their company can get a piece of the pie from all upstream and downstream parts of the entire industry chain.

It is precisely because of the support of Galaxy Group that even though the number of screens in 2015 was only half of that in 1 when "Nezha 2019" was originally released, its first-day box office performance was not inferior to the original version.

Even in the following days after the movie was released, its daily box office performance was extremely stable, earning 100 million Chinese yuan almost every day. The overall box office trend is still excellent among live-action movies, let alone animated movies.

Even if another Hollywood animated film "Inside Out" is released on October 10, it will not affect the continued popularity of "Nezha: The Devil Child Comes into the World".

Although "Inside Out" is extremely excellent in terms of quality and story concept, representing the top level of Hollywood animated films, the depth of its story itself is not suitable for the Chinese market.

Therefore, it only earned more than 1 million yuan on the first day of its release, far lower than "Nezha: The Devil Child Comes into the World" which had been released for a few days.

Moreover, "Inside Out" is of outstanding quality, and "Nezha: The Devil Child Comes into the World" itself is not bad either.

Not to mention the more refined images that have been enhanced by the technology of the special effects and animation departments of the Galaxy Group, the story content has also been reconstructed and innovated to a certain extent based on the original mythological story of "Nezha".

The theme of "My destiny is in my own hands" is undoubtedly more in line with the thinking of young people in the new era, and has triggered widespread discussion and resonance among everyone.

Even in this animated film, director Jiaozi and the creative team added many new ideas and more Chinese elements.

For example, there is a scene in the movie where Taiyi Zhenren accepts Nezha as his disciple and prepares to teach him skills, so he takes out the magic weapon "Map of Mountains and Rivers and the State".

The interior of the original Shanhe Shejitu is a 3D animation scene, which is exquisite but has no special features.

However, with more funds, technology and talents, the world in Shanhe Shejitu used 3D special effects technology to present an ink painting style with distinctive Chinese characteristics, forming a short but extremely wonderful ink animation clip.

You should know that in 1960, the first ink-and-wash animation film "The Tadpole Looking for Its Mother" was produced by Shanghai Animation Studio, and it caused a sensation around the world as soon as it was released.

Different from ordinary cartoons, ink-and-wash animation is a new type of animation art created by Chinese artists.

It uses Chinese ink painting techniques as a means of expression for character modeling and environmental space modeling, and employs special processing techniques for animation shooting to capture ink painting images and compositions one by one, and through continuous projection forms ink painting images with varying shades of light and dark, real and virtual.

There are no contour lines in ink-and-wash animation. The ink is naturally rendered on the rice paper. It looks so natural and each scene is an excellent ink painting.

The characters in the painting have graceful and lively movements and expressions, the ink-splashed landscape background is bold and magnificent, and the soft brushstrokes are full of poetry.

It can be said that ink-and-wash animation is a unique treasure of Chinese film and television culture and art. With the help of the new form of animation, it fully embodies the mysterious aesthetics of "between similarity and dissimilarity" in Chinese painting.

However, due to the need for layered rendering and coloring, the production process of ink-and-wash animation is also very complicated, and often a short film consumes a lot of time and manpower.

At the beginning, the investment of Shanghai Animation Film Studio in ink-and-wash films was also extremely huge, and the production team was also very solid. In addition to older generation animation masters such as Te Wei and Qian Jiajun, even famous Chinese painting artists such as Li Keran and Cheng Shifa had participated in the art guidance.

It is precisely because of this unsparing pursuit of art that China produced such excellent ink-and-wash animation works as "The Tadpole Looking for Its Mother", "Shepherd's Flute", "The Deer Bell" and "Landscape Love" in the 1960s and 1970s, which won unanimous praise internationally.

In this art, no country dares to compete with the patience of the Chinese, and no country has such a profound and long-standing aesthetic heritage as China. The Japanese animation industry even calls Chinese ink animation a "miracle" in the animation industry.

However, precisely because of the cumbersome creation process, after the subsequent wave of marketization and the rise of computer 3D animation, Chinese ink-and-wash animation gradually faced the embarrassing situation of being unable to continue.

Especially with the decline of Shanghai Animation Film Studio, this unique artistic form has disappeared in China and gradually become a niche. Animation fans are often only able to see old films that have been re-screened or restored in high definition.

Now, with the help of new-age computer special effects technology, ink-and-wash animation has briefly regained life in a peculiar form in the movie "Nezha: The Devil Child Comes into the World" and appeared in front of the public.

In the freehand, ethereal and fairy-like colorful landscape painting, the lively demon boy Nezha and the chubby Taiyi Zhenren travel freely. Dark green, red, ochre, indigo, rouge and other colorful colors form countless novel scenes. A small boat carries the master and apprentice in the blank water, creating layers of ripples. The scenery along the way is in the form of 3D light and shadow, which immerses countless audiences.

At this moment, the Chinese ink painting technique and traditional aesthetic of leaving blank space, with the support of new technologies in the new era, show their unique style and charm.

All we can say is that Chinese fashion is the coolest, and the Chinese people have their own aesthetic preferences.

This ink-and-wash animation in "Nezha: The Devil Child Comes into the World" has been appreciated and loved by most audiences since its appearance, and it is still talked about after they leave the cinema.

It is precisely this unique Chinese style element, coupled with the careful polishing and full commitment of the creative team, that the cumulative box office of "Nezha: The Devil Child Comes into the World" exceeded 7 billion Chinese yuan in 10 days after its release, breaking the first-week box office record for domestic animations.

This data undoubtedly once again verifies the rise of Chinese animation, but the time is different. The current number of screens in the country is ultimately not as high as in 2019.

In addition, in 2015, most adults still had some prejudices against Chinese animation, and the voices of young people were not as loud as they would be a few years later. Therefore, after the first week's sprint, the single-day box office performance of "Nezha: The Devil Child Comes into the World" inevitably fell.

(End of this chapter)