With this ambitious blend of live-action with CG characters, 2D effects, and AI, Shanghai-based director/motion designer Somei Sun unleashes a visceral allegory for the extreme electronics packed into the new iQOO Neo9 phone.

Somei Sun: “The biggest challenge in this project was to make the CG characters both realistic and maintain the stylized features of Japanese animation. We wanted the characters to be believable because the film also uses a lot of live footage.

“In order to avoid falling into the uncanny valley, we wanted to maintain the stylized type of animation. At the same time, the performance of the characters also needed to be natural and believable, especially in the first half, where the Neo character has a lot of emotional performances, such as misspeaking.

“We originally planned to shoot models similar to Neo’s physique, and then replace the head. But when we finished shooting and composited the CG head, it felt very strange. So in the end we chose to use full CG to complete all the character performance shots.
 

“The performance of the characters also needed to be natural and believable, especially in the first half, where the Neo character has a lot of emotional performances, such as misspeaking.”

 
“This is the first time I’ve tried to control character facial expressions and speech. During the test edit, we found that these shots did not stand out when edited together with other live footage, which gave us more confidence in dealing with the remaining shots.

“We also used AIGC (artificial intelligence-generated content) to assist in the creation of the monster scene sets. Also in a small section of the monster flashback in the film, we tried to generate content directly with Runway. To some extent, it has played an efficiency-enhancing role.

“At the same time, we found that mixing Japanese 2D FX with realistic rendering is also a good way to blend reality and stylization. Therefore, we adopted this style in the climax and tried to make the character’s actions and camera movements more anime like. The hope was that it would form a strong contrast with the realistic film style presented earlier.”
 
 

 
Client: iQOO

Director: Somei
Executive Producer: 祖彬, 阿达
Live action director: 赵硕
Producer: 高松 张皓帆
Director assistant: 德德
Executive director: Ash
Director of Photography: 安铮
Art Director: 曹爱珠
Gaffer: 皮皮
Props master: 姚迪
Storyboard Artist: Peter, 中羽
Character Rigging: 烧麦, Animator.J Studio, 蜜獾先生
Modeling: 烧麦、蜜獾先生、树涛、Newawa、禹诺人形、帅帅
Character Animation: 烧麦、Animator.J Studio、蜜獾先生、树涛、Newawa
Rendering: 烧麦、Solid Studio、张磊、何志超（Chiu Design）、树涛、雷鹏、帅帅、Newawa
Product Rendering: Jason Wang
Visual Effects Artist: 合光棱镜
CFX: Animator.J Studio, Solid Studio
VFX: Solid Studio
2D special effects: 小森子、Solid Studio、十四
Editing Artist: 烧麦, 子龙
AI Production Artist: 杰宝
TC Artist: 阿瓜

Music: JAWS
Sound Design: B.E MIX

Special thanks: 王传真, 峰峰居士