Ne Zha 2｜How difficult is it to produce Ne Zha 2?

Published : 2025-03-14

Substantial amount of visual effects in Ne Zha 2

The box office of Ne Zha 2 has been soaring, thanks to the dedicated cooperation of 138 Chinese animation companies and over 4,000 practitioners. These teams have meticulously polished the work, finally completing the production of Ne Zha 2 in five years.

Why gather the strength of so many companies to produce this?

Firstly, the special effects scale of Ne Zha 2 is enormous. Compared to its predecessor, Ne Zha: Birth of the Demon Child ("Ne Zha 1") which was released in 2019, the number of characters in this sequel is three times that of the first instalment.

For instance, the scenes of battles between the demon tribe and the fairy world have 200 million characters.

Ne Zha 2 has over 1,800 shots in the entire film, while Ne Zha 2 has more than 2,400 shots, with over 1,900 of these being special effects shots.

Secondly, compared to Ne Zha 1, the quality of the images and special effects in the second instalment has been vastly improved.

The co-director of animation for Ne Zha 2, Ge Yi (戈弋), stated that the characters' faces in Ne Zha 1 were "smooth", whereas the characters' faces in Ne Zha 2 are "meticulously detailed", showcasing the difference in technology.

Behind the exquisite images lies a tremendous challenge.

Among the more than 130 companies involved in the production of Ne Zha 2, all but 20 were at Chengdu, the film's core production location, and the rest were from all over the country, which meant that the production process needed a great deal of cross-regional collaboration.

Moreover, nearly half of them are companies with fewer than 20 employees. Ge Yi stated, "We also want to find big companies with fewer subcontracting procedures, but we couldn't find any."

Collective effort from teams across the country

To cope with the challenges, production teams from various areas across China put their heart and soul into the work.

For instance, the scene where Ne Zha goes to the Treasure Vault of Yuxu Palace to fetch the Qiongjiang Yuye (琼浆玉液, a kind of divine liquor), which lasts for just three seconds, took the Hongli Animation Studios a year and a half to produce.

Additionally, the spectacular effects of the chains and the initial appearance of the void crack at Chentang Pass in the movie were fully produced by a company from Nanjing.

Companies like Ainstar Studio and Fantawild, among others, also appeared on the list of visual effects production teams of Ne Zha 2. The former is a company of Wang Xin (王昕), the co-director of Jiang Ziya (《姜子牙》), another animated film based on Chinese mythology; the latter produced the famous Boonie Bears (熊出沒) series.

It is worth noting that 10 animation companies from Guangdong Province also participated in the production of Ne Zha 2, mainly involved in joint production, visual effects production, and rendering.

Locator is an animation company from Shenzhen. It participated in the production of Ne Zha 1, and this time it created the lava special effects for the "Sky Splitting Claw" (裂空爪) and the explosion effects in Ne Zha 2.

The person in charge at Locator said, "Technically, we were close to the Hollywood level five years ago. Now the real challenge lies in integrating the Eastern aesthetics."

Furthermore, the exquisite special effects are supported by cloud rendering.

According to the introduction, Shenzhen's Rayvision independently developed a cloud rendering platform for Ne Zha 2, which synchronously rendered by distributing to multiple high-performance computers through the network.

For instance, the rendering period for a complex three-second shot in Ne Zha 2 was shortened from over 400 days to less than 24 hours.

In addition, Beepcat-art from Guangzhou, was responsible for the preliminary concept design of characters and scenes such as Ao Run (敖閏), Ao Shun (敖順), Ao Qin (敖欽) of the Dragon Clan, the marmots, and Lady Stone (石磯娘娘) in Ne Zha 2.

Although the team did not use many advanced technologies, they incorporated the flowing curves of Chinese animations from the 1980s and 1990s through traditional hand-drawn methods.

Accumulation of animation talents promotes the progress of China's animated film industry

The success of Ne Zha 2 is not only a victory for one film but also a reflection of the progress and development of China's animated film industry.

A senior animation producer, Dong Jianping (董劍萍), stated that through the training from overseas outsourcing projects and the development of numerous original projects, Mainland China has accumulated a group of high-quality animation talents in recent years.

Moreover, with the gradual popularisation of AI technology and open-source information, it is believed that there will be more composite talents mastering animation technology in the country in the future, and the industrial model will become increasingly mature.

Read more: Ne Zha 2 surges to top of the global box office for animated films

Read more: Ne Zha 2 director: Chinese animation cannot rely on outsourcing