Guo Jingming, director and writer of the namesake novel on which the film is based. (Photo provided to China Daily)
In China's booming movie market, the number of such ambitious fantasy productions that stumble in the visual-effects game is not insignificant.
Recent duds have included the TV series Ice Fantasy, starring Feng Shaofeng, and the Jet Li film League of Gods.
The productions were slammed for their visual effects and their over-reliance on colored contact lenses.
In most of the scenes in these films and TV series, the fictional beasts or creatures were criticized for looking like stuffed toys because of their unnatural eyes and expressions.
Up to nine of this year's 10 highest-grossing films feature heavy effects, and most of the top-rated television serials are fantasy tales with lots of digital effects.
So, despite a huge potential market, why does the country's special effects industry fail to meet viewers' expectations?
Industry sources say that small budgets and less time are major problems, but these issues are typically underestimated by producers.
Dwelling on these issues, Xu Fei, the founder of Illumina, a Beijing-based special-effects studio, says: "The maker of a top Hollywood sci-fi film will spend nearly half his budget on visual effects, but in China the amount is 20 percent or less."
Typically, for visual effects, the process starts with the designing of sets in pre-production, moves on to shooting the live action and ends with doing the digital effects in the post-production process.
