Digital Frontier | CG MAKING | I AM A HERO

Despite the need for prosthetics, the zombie genre of horror films has production cost ranges that are incredibly broad. With every budget that spends only 45 GBP (approx.65 USD) there are Hollywood zombie films with cost tens of millions of US dollars. However, most people typically have the impression that zombie films are low budget B-movies. George A. Romero, a zombie film pioneer and master, made his films in this exact fashion and his success can be credited for making this stereotype stick. The sense that fans of the genre were limited to an eccentric audience continued for a long time. Its fans were not typical film buffs, nor were they fans of simple horror films, nor were they monster movie fans, the zombie film was a small market supported by fans that only liked zombie films. It wasn’t until the 2000s that Hollywood began to make zombie films for a larger audience. The mainstream zombie movement began with 2 titles, 2013’s “World War Z” and the TV drama “The Walking Dead” that began airing in 2010. For these titles, an enormous budget was spent on creating high quality VFX-driven zombies that looked like living corpses. Combined with compelling dramatic elements, these A-level zombie titles increased to the point that even the general audience became captivated by the genre.

On the other end, Japanese zombies have been continued to be portrayed as they always have been, as symbolic characters. In recent years, zombie titles have emerged using famous idols and comedians to expand customer bases all the way to kabuki; but the biggest sales points have always been the combination of the casting and the genre. The depiction of zombies never really changed. Traditionally the Japanese, a culture that practices cremation, has long struggled to accept the idea of a zombie being born from a grave. But the reason that the traditional image of a zombie never changed most likely has to do with the fact that Japan does not invest in big budget productions in the way that Hollywood does. Despite these circumstances, the Japanese zombie film “I AM A HERO” was created. In the film, the ZQN (pronounced Zokyun) are lifeforms that emerge due to the spread of a mysterious virus. Just as in the Kengo Hanazawa’s original manga, the film brings them to life in such a raw and realistic way that it will make you want to turn away from the screen in horror. In the film, the beings are not referred to as “zombies”. But they come into existence in a way that is realistic in a Japanese society and chase their victims with the same unbreakable resolve that “zombies” from burial cultures do. In the end, even the Japanese become overrun by this new type of living corpse! How exactly was the ZQN, a new type of zombie, created? Atsushi Doi, the leader of the CG production team, and 5 team members from the composite, character and animation departments will share what production looked like from the VFX side.

(Interviewer: Kao Yamashita from ZAKKA MEKKA Inc. / Text: Miyuki Morikawa)