As of May 6th, an exciting piece of news has come: The film “Nezha: The Demon Child’s Uproar in the Sea” has been making continuous progress in Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan and overseas markets with its outstanding artistic charm and wide market influence. Its total box office has successfully surpassed the 15.8 billion yuan mark, leaping to the fifth highest position in global box office history. This work takes traditional Chinese mythology as its core and ingeniously employs modern animation technology for innovative expression. It has already become a Chinese cultural product with global benchmark significance and has set a new milestone for the development of China’s animation industry.
As an important part of China’s animation industry map, Xinjiang’s animation industry enjoys unique development advantages. The profound historical accumulation and unique natural and cultural landscapes here provide an inexhaustible source of inspiration for animation creation. Many of the graphic designs in “Nezha: The Demon Child’s Rebellion in the Sea”, which is based on traditional Chinese mythology, are inspired by the real Kunlun Mountains, and Xinjiang is precisely the region where the Kunlun Mountains are located. From the classic “Afanti”, this folk figure who rode a donkey and used his wisdom to resist the oppression of the powerful, accompanied the growth of several generations with humor and wit, and is still active in the public cultural field today, to the lively “Snow Monster Ale” in Altay, “The Adventure of Kra and Ma Yi” that conveys Xinjiang stories, and the “Kucha Baby” that has regained modern vitality with the help of artificial intelligence, The animated characters in Xinjiang are constantly being updated and innovated, and a compound development model of “culture + technology + tourism” has been formed. The Karamay Cloud Computing Industrial Park has established the largest single-scale film, television and animation rendering base in the northwest region, with a maximum deployment of 20,000 rendering nodes. It has participated in the rendering work of over 3,000 films and TV series, including “The Wandering Earth”, demonstrating strong technical support capabilities.
However, while achieving certain accomplishments, the animation industry in Xinjiang is also confronted with many challenges that need to be urgently addressed. In the field of content creation, the exploration of historical and cultural resources is still at a relatively shallow level. The industrial scale is relatively small, enterprises are in a state of being “small and scattered”, and the interaction between the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain is seriously insufficient. The problem of talent shortage is particularly prominent, and there is a huge gap of compound talents with both artistic foundation and technical ability. Lack of funds has also become a key factor restricting the development of the industry. Difficulties in project financing and insufficient motivation for derivative product development have led to many high-quality projects being unable to effectively enhance the value of their ips.
The success of the “Nezha” film series has brought valuable inspiration for Xinjiang’s animation industry to solve these problems. In terms of content creation, Xinjiang should deeply explore its rich local cultural resources, taking Kunlun culture as the entry point and infusing it with profound cultural heritage. In terms of expression methods, actively promote the integration of myths and legends, historical stories, etc. with modern technological and popular culture elements; In terms of talent cultivation, draw on the “industry college” model to attract professional talents; In terms of improving the industrial chain, efforts should be made to strengthen the development and sales of derivatives. In the future, Xinjiang’s animation industry can only fully draw on successful experiences, leverage its cultural resources and geographical advantages, adhere to the roots of Chinese culture, and make good use of technological empowerment. Only in this way can it bring new contemporary brilliance to Chinese civilization in the narrative of animation and contribute greater strength to the global spread of Chinese culture.