Animals are a familiar presence on screen, but filming with real ones often runs into animal welfare regulations, while heavy use of computer graphics can quickly drive up costs. Prop animals offer a practical alternative, bridging the gap between realism and production constraints.

Wan Boyuan, Technical Director of Film Props Company:

You can see that this bionic dog can already recreate animal features at a one-to-one level. Details such as facial expressions, eyelids and eyeballs look so real that they are almost indistinguishable from the real thing.

In Qingdao, northern China, a film industry park covering 1.7 million square meters is using advanced technology to power artistic creation. By combining bionic mechanics with visual storytelling, the park enables highly realistic animal performances that remove long-standing filming barriers and give on-screen creatures a new sense of vitality.

The team focuses on special effects makeup, bionic machinery and simulated animals, while also developing original intellectual property. It has independently designed interactive mechanical pandas.

Wan Boyuan, Technical Director of Film Props Company:

It captures expressions in real time, even very subtle ones. Inside the panda, more than 40 joints are used to imitate muscles, movements and eye actions. In the future, these could be developed further for uses such as animal guide roles in settings similar to zoos.