Stop Motion Production

Here is how the picture comes together. Stop-motion in China draws on one of the world's deepest animation heritages, anchored by the Shanghai Animation Film Studio (上海美术电影制片厂) — the studio behind Havoc in Heaven (大闹天宫), Calabash Brothers (葫芦兄娃) and the celebrated paper-cut and puppet films of the 1960s and 1970s that defined the Chinese aesthetic language. Modern stop-motion now runs alongside the country's booming 2D and 3D animation sector, with Light Chaser Animation in Shanghai (behind Ne Zha and Yao-Chinese Folktales, the biggest sites in Chinese animation today), Original Force, NetEase Animation, Tencent Animation and the Bilibili Animation pipeline all commissioning hybrid stop-motion and CG segments for streaming originals, music videos and branded content.

Here is how this works in practice. Our crew connects shoots with pro Chinese ateliers in Beijing, Shanghai and Hangzhou for puppet builders delivering armature-based characters with metal skeletons, silicone or foam bodies and replacement-face systems, while set builders construct scale environments to the standard expected by Chinese feature animation, commercial and music-video sectors — including Mid-Autumn Festival and Lunar New Year campaigns that lean on traditional craft references.

Here is what we have to work with. Capture happens on Dragonframe-equipped rigs running Sony A7R V and Canon EOS R5 mirrorless bodies at 4K and above, with steady practical lighting, motorised focus control and motion-control camera moves on imported Mark Roberts rigs ready when sequences call for dollies, pans or crane motion alongside the frame-by-frame animation. Production planning recognises the time profile of stop motion — mostly one to five seconds of finished animation per shooting day, with a thirty-second commercial often spanning several weeks of capture plus pre-production and post.

Here is the layout. The picture on the ground is more specific. Our team supports each stage: storyboarding, character and set design and tech pre-visualisation through to fabrication, animation direction on stage at Hengdian World Studios, Qingdao Oriental Movie Metropolis or partner studios in Beijing, Shanghai and Hangzhou, and the final pass through Chinese VFX facilities. Post — rig removal, compositing, miniature integration and DI grading — runs through Base FX Beijing, MPC Shanghai, Digital Domain China and Light Chaser Animation Shanghai.

Here is how the work shapes up. A few details matter here. Productions claiming the Qingdao 40-per-cent rebates are supported with the NRTA, CFA and provincial film bureau forms their financiers need, alongside 17-per-cent VAT forms, customs clearance for imported stop-motion rigs and the required Chinese co-producer relationship that foreign shoots need.