American Born Chinese

DNEG delivered 270 shots across all 8 episodes for ‘American Born Chinese’ as the main VFX partner for the series.

Our VFX team’s work included complex animal transformations and creature animation, multiple variations of magic FX, and challenging CG environment builds including the huge waterfall at the Edge of Heaven and the cloud vortex portal.

For the series’ opening episode, our teams were tasked with showing the Monkey King’s successive transformations into a falcon, tiger, fish and wolf, before finally assuming his human form. We created digital creature assets and magical transformations for each of the animal forms, and added interactive effects including the tiger jumping into the lake.

Our teams also created various magical effects for the ambitious fight scenes across the series. We developed distinct styles of magic for the Monkey King, Bull Demon, Guanyin, and the Goddess of Compassion so that when each character uses the Monkey King’s staff the magic is visually and dynamically attuned to their individual natures.

AN ACTION-PACKED MYTHOLOGICAL ADVENTURE

'American Born Chinese' | VFX Breakdown