The orangutan image in the film is largely achieved through dynamic capture and CG technology. The film was originally scheduled to be shot in 20 1 1 year, but the shooting plan was delayed for a time because of insufficient prediction of the difficulty of 3D production. Later, Yong-hwa Kim invited his brother, director Jiang Dikui, to be the producer, revised the script and put it back into shooting.
The film was jointly produced by Huayi Brothers and Korean film company SHOWBOX, with a total investment of 20 million US dollars, breaking the record of co-production investment between China and South Korea. According to Wang Zhonglei, president of Huayi Brothers, 60% of the movie budget is used for special effects production. The special effects production team absorbed 300 Asian special effects talents. It took four years of preparation, the whole process of 3D shooting, and the post-production time was as long as seven months. There are more than 1000 virtual gorilla shots in the movie, which greatly exceeds the number of virtual role shots in similar Hollywood movies such as King Kong and The Rise of the Planet of the Apes. In order to deal with a large number of virtual character data, the film production team independently developed a set of hair processing system-Seelos Furs, which realized the ultra-efficient data processing of 1: 100, and made 10 shots with the budget of Hollywood film10, creating a movie.
As the first virtual character created by pure CG on the Asian screen, Mr. GO made a special trip to Ueno Zoo in Japan to learn about the life habits and behaviors of gorillas. Twenty animators watched the gorillas' every move from all angles, and then spent another year simulating animation to form a complete action reference. The crew analyzed all the orangutan videos that can be found on the Internet, and on this basis, perfected the action modeling of MRGO. Before the film officially started shooting, the crew had established a huge and perfect animation material.
In addition, as early as before shooting, the two motion capture actors trained for more than a year, wearing node capture suits embedded with gyroscopes every day to learn and imitate the orangutans' every move. Finally, they laughed and said that they were "completely living the life of an orangutan". The technicians in charge of motion capture recorded all their actions in the computer, created a set of databases, and combined them with the achievements of CG animators, giving MRGO super vitality.