A few months from now and people can say if a hedgehog is going to be the next darling pet of moviegoers in the country.
Venture capital firm Star VC picked a spiny animal and gave it the biggest role on its upcoming film featuring anthropomorphic animals.
Directed by Huang Jianming, the animated adventure movie "Bobby the Hedgehog" tells the escapades of Bobby, who lost his memory, and his friend, a pigeon, as they navigate the city in search of finding one’s true self, according to CRIEnglish.
The site said that it can be the “Chinese version of ‘Zootopia.’”
It is “somewhat similar” to the British stop-motion animated television series, “Shaun the Sheep,” according to China Daily.
Do the names Huang Bo, Huang Xiaoming, Li Bingbing, Ren Quang and Zhang Ziyi ring a bell?
If they don't to some, then they might as well be pricked by a bunch of hedgehogs.
These celebrities make up the list of investors behind Star VC.
Actor-singer Ren (“Night Mail,” “The Chrysalis”) said that the film’s high-quality visual effects (VFX) convinced Star VC to invest on it, reported China Daily.
Beijing-based Daysview Digital Image created the animation, according to CRIEnglish.
“Painful animation.”
That’s how Wil Manning described the quality of VFX of local films during an interview with the online edition of Cinefex, a magazine about motion picture visual effects.
Manning works as the VFX supervisor at the Beijing branch of Pixomondo, an international visual effects company headquartered in Frankfurt, Germany.
From Cinefex, here is Manning’s lengthy comment about how bad VXF can get in local movies:
“If you watch a lot of Chinese films, you’ll see a heap of bad VFX. Bad edges. Poor extractions. Mistimed plates. Missing grain. Painful animation. Mediocre lighting. It makes trained eyes bleed and gives me nightmares.”