On August 29, the 11th day after the release of "New God List: Yang Jian", the film's box office officially exceeded 300 million. As a new work of Light Chasing Animation, which took three and a half years to create, "Yang Jian" is still on the road of new mythology and upholds t

As a new work created by light-chasing animation which took three and a half years to create, "Yang Jian" is still on the road of new mythology and upholds the top production standards of light-chasing animation.

However, "Yang Jian" is still an "atypical" Chinese-style animated film. From a narrative perspective, this is an "atypical" Erlang Shen story. Yang Jian, the god of war in traditional mythology, was not only blind and unable to recognize his nephew Chen Xiang, but he also became a free and easy silver hunter. From the perspective of art style, "Yang Jian" is also an "atypical" ancient Chinese comic. Metal, steampunk and other elements are integrated with traditional Chinese culture to build another fantasy world.

On the other hand, "Yang Jian" also encountered an "atypical" publicity and distribution cycle. In 2022, summer films will be airborne more and more often, and the promotion cycle will be shortened to the extreme.

's "atypical" story and style, coupled with the "atypical" ultra-short promotion period, the animated film "Yang Jian"'s market journey was full of twists and turns and controversy.

was produced for three and a half years, and "Sour" was produced for three and a half days.

Producer Lu Xi introduced to Interface Entertainment that the idea of ​​producing "Yang Jian" was born in early 2019, and the production will be completed in June 2022.

is in the period of the epidemic, and the film production process has also been affected by the epidemic. In March 2022, "Yang Jian" was submitted for review in Shanghai, but it happened to hit the epidemic. The work of relevant departments slowed down, and it took a long time to get the approval. While

was waiting for approval, the project entered an advanced stage in April and May, and caught up with the recurrence of the epidemic in some areas of Beijing. A large number of post-production studios are closed due to the epidemic, and directors must work on site during this stage. Lu Xi recalled that at that time, the team tried every means to call the Beijing post-production studio one by one. "We would run to any one that could be opened. We wished we could go to this area and stay in this area for three days in advance to do nucleic acid testing to see if we could get in."

But "Yang Jian" did not escape the fate of being "extremely scheduled" for the 2022 summer film.

's publicity actions are infinitely compressed, and the main creator's workload increases instantly. Lu Xi said that the team had stayed up several nights to produce and review various materials before the release.

Regarding the extreme release, director Zhao Ji's evaluation was "sour and refreshing". In more than a week after the announcement, he accepted interviews non-stop, ran road shows, and even appeared on the live broadcast of Oriental Screening to talk with Yu Minhong and Dong Yuhui . "It was indeed affected by the short promotion period. I feel A lot of people don’t know the film is coming out”.

Although "very exhausted mentally and physically", the team still received a lot of unexpected feedback during the intensive promotion period.

First of all, it is the expansion of the age group of the audience. In Zhao Ji's impression, in the past, light-chasing animated films were more attractive to young audiences, but this time, he clearly felt that there were more children in the audience. There were even parents who "watched" the movie alone and then took their children to "second." brush".

In addition, the audience has multi-dimensional and multi-level interpretations of the film. During the road show, some people saw Yang Jian's forbearance and determination, while others saw family affection. The audience has different opinions on the theme that "Yang Jian" wants to express. However, in Zhao Ji's view, it no longer matters which interpretation is closer to his original intention. "When a film can trigger further thinking and discussion among the audience, the film has succeeded."

Story, special effects and style , is it good or bad?

But the voices surrounding "Yang Jian" are not just praise.

Since the release of the film, there have been comments about the poor narrative pacing and confusing plot. Some viewers talked to Interface Entertainment about their feelings after watching the show, saying that "the story is too fragmented and the ending is inexplicable." Similar views also appeared in the evaluations of many film and television bloggers. There were also short comments on Douban that praised the film and wrote: "Three stars are sorry for the special effects, four stars are sorry for the plot" and "The screenwriters should kneel down and kowtow to the artists."

talked about the audience's complaints about the drama "Yang Jian", and Zhao Ji talked about the industrialization of national comics. When he went abroad for exchanges, he discovered that in the early stage of creation, Disney had a massive "screenwriter library". Based on matching themes, multiple screenwriters worked together to plan and complete a story. However, similar domestic systems are relatively weak. “There are not many mature screenwriters willing to spend several years making an animated film.”

What is different from the play is that the technically difficult and visually stunning shots in "Yang Jian" have won unanimous praise from the audience. The creators also put a lot of effort into the special effects.

"To put it simply, the workload is doubled." Lu Xi introduced that the story of "New God List: Nezha Rebirth" (hereinafter referred to as " Nezha Rebirth ") mainly takes place in Donghai City, and the story of "Yang Jian" spans Spanning both the human and divine realms and involving the four regions of Penglai, Fanghu, Yingzhou and Human World, the modeling workload is huge. In order to create "the most beautiful man in heaven", the character designer repeatedly crafted more than ten versions of Yang Jian's image.

In addition to the increase in workload, Zhao Ji also mentioned technological innovation. He believes that it is difficult to directly compare domestic animation production technology with Europe and the United States because many technologies have not been done abroad. For example, in the third act, Yang Jian is involved in the Tai Chi diagram, and the three-dimensional animation is converted into a 10-minute ink animation . The technical implementation is both complicated and expensive.

"Simply speaking, three-dimensional animation is a real scene, and each blade of grass must be made individually; but ink painting can't wait to cover the entire mountain with one stroke. During production, it needs to be restored from three-dimensional real scene to three-dimensional ink painting, and then to two-dimensional flat ink painting. , which involves several layers of changes," Zhao Ji described, "these things Holly We haven’t done much with , so we can’t say that our technology is better than Hollywood’s, but at least we haven’t copied Hollywood and are trying to challenge ourselves with new things.”

The plot has been criticized, the special effects have been praised, and the art style has been criticized for its ancient and modern elements. A mixed bag, it received mixed reviews.

In fact, starting from the first work of the "New God List" "Nezha Rebirth", some people have had doubts about the visual style that mixes classical elements with modern elements. The story of the previous game was set in Shanghai during the Republic of China, integrating traditional Chinese style and punk elements. There were a lot of dazzling neon lights and industrial-style buildings, which were somewhat different from the past understanding of "national style".

"When every generation of creators tells stories, they will understand it in the context of the world at that time. Contemporary China has reached such a level of modernization and technology, why can't ancient legends be combined with modern things to express it?" Talking about the choice of visual style , Zhao Ji responded like this. Judging from the comments he received, the majority of viewers like the art style that combines ancient and modern times.

Lu Xi said frankly that after the release of "Nezha Rebirth", the creative team did receive extremely extreme feedback and printed out the comments to discuss them one by one. "Especially the harsh criticism. Let's see what everyone thinks and what we think ourselves. ". Regarding the market acceptance of new styles, she said, "The formation and exploration of innovative styles must be a process. Creators will make some adjustments and also look at audience feedback. We certainly hope that more audiences will love and accept this style. , but it also takes enough time for the audience to accept it. "

has an adjusted style compared to the previous work "Yang Jian", with a greater proportion of oriental elements. But Lu Xi disagreed that this was "catering to the audience" and "just more suitable for the story." "Each story and theme will be completed or expressed in a different art style, which will also enrich the 'New God List' series." The two main creators of

agreed that the art style should serve the narrative. The theme of "Nezha Rebirth" is Nezha's "rebellion", so the character has a very punk feel, with a lot of punk elements and mechanical elements; while Yang Jian's story takes place in ancient times, the key words for the character are leisure and chic, and the style is More of an ancient fantasy.

The team also put a lot of thought into the balance between Eastern and Western elements. For example, many people think that spaceship is representative of the West, and the creators want Chinese gods to fly the spaceship. However, when the design was implemented, the spacecraft retained the structure of a classical Chinese wooden ship. "Our wooden ship has a very round and full hull, while European sailing ships have a pointed bottom."Such details ensure that while the film is "modern", it can also allow the audience to experience the ancient charm.

Three animations in four years because of "no money"

"Yang Jian" is the seventh work of Chasing Light Animation and the second work in the "New God List" series. Judging from the director's resume, this is also the third animated film released by director Zhao Ji in four years. (The other two films are "White Snake: Origin" and "New God List: Nezha Rebirth")

"Three films in four years. I dare say that there is no other animation director in the world at this speed." Rough calculation, Zhao Within a year, Ji had three animated films on his hands. He said that it is normal for light-chasing animation creation to advance multiple works at the same time, but other domestic animated film labels do not have such a creative density.

Generally speaking, the production cycle of animated movies is relatively long. The production cycle of some domestic leading animated film projects takes more than 7 years, and the production cycle of some Disney animated films also takes more than 5 years.

Zhao Ji bluntly said that the reason for maintaining high-speed creation is "no money." He explained that time is cost. Only by spreading the cost equally among three projects in one year can the cost be reduced. "If we do a project for a whole year, the cost will be three times what it is now. No one in China will spend so much money to do (an animated film)."

Lu Xi introduced that the production cost of "Yang Jian" is about the same as "Minion 2" "One-fifth to one-sixth of it, "It's quite hard work."

Talking about the future plans of the "New God List" series, Lu Xi said that the current team hopes to "do the current things well step by step, and make heroes in traditional Chinese culture steadily."

As always, " The post-credits Easter egg of "Yang Jian" announced a new light-chasing animation. In addition to revealing that Nezha and Yang Jian will meet in the new film of the "New God List" series, it also previewed the "New Culture" series and the first work "Chang'an Thirty Thousand Miles" with historical figures as the protagonists. So far, Light Chasing Animation has launched three series of animated films: "New Legend", "New God List" and "New Culture".

Lu Xi revealed that "New Culture" will be handled by a team different from "New Legend" and "New God List", but the team members are talents cultivated from within Chasing Light Animation. This will be their role as director and producer. The first work produced by the identity.