Born of the Tide: AI Cuts a Third Off Chinese Animation

Chinese animation director Wei Li told a Cannes Marché du Film panel on May 20 that his AI assisted feature Born of the Tide cut roughly one third off both production time and budget compared to his prior animated works. The film is a hybrid pipeline, not a fully AI generated project. Wei Li hand drew approximately 80 percent of its storyboards while AI handled the remainder.

Wei Li spoke on the same Palais des Festivals main stage panel as Korean director Eekjun Yang and U.S. director Jon Erwin. The session, titled "From Creative Possibility to Production Reality: Kling AI in Cinematic Workflows", ran across May 18 to 20 and was organized by Kling AI parent Kuaishou.

The Hybrid Pipeline Argument

Wei Li's position cut against the framing of AI animation as a pure replacement of traditional craft. "It's not just an AI created film. It's not following the AI workflow only. We're still using some traditional animation creation. But in using AI, we've shortened the production schedule to two thirds of the time, and similarly with the budget", he told Deadline.

In Screen Daily he made the creative case for the same workflow: "You can use the AI to free your hands, express your mind and utilise your imagination more". The argument is that AI absorbs the repetitive labor that drains animation budgets, while keeping the parts that define visual identity in human hands.

The Film

Born of the Tide centers on the Tanka people, a Chinese coastal community often described as sea nomads because of their traditional floating way of life. The visual style is traditional Chinese ink painting, the technique that defines centuries of Chinese scroll work.

Kling AI's native 4K output handles the film's large scale sequences: dragon boat races, fish market scenes, and mountain battles. The choice of AI for those moments lets Wei Li keep the slower hand drawn ink work for the character animation that carries the story's emotional weight.

Who Wei Li Is

Wei Li directed Jiang Ziya: Legend of Deification, a 2020 animated release that grossed over $228 million and ranked among China's biggest animated openings of that year, per Asian Movie Pulse. Jiang Ziya received an Annecy 2021 official selection. He is also associated with Big Fish and Begonia, the 2016 ink influenced fantasy that became a touchstone for the modern Chinese animation revival.

That commercial track record matters to the AI case. Wei Li is not a first time director looking for a cheaper entry path. He is a director with a $228 million credit who chose AI specifically because the hybrid pipeline preserves the traditional ink work his films are known for.

Inside the Cannes Kling Panel

Wei Li was one of three directors who presented production data from active projects on the Kling AI panel. Eekjun Yang spoke about Raphael, the Korean theatrical AI feature, and Jon Erwin discussed the House of David hybrid workflow. The full overview of the panel and Kling AI's broader Cannes announcements is in our Kling AI Filmmaker Initiative coverage.

Kling AI's tools, used across all three projects, are available in the AI FILMS Studio video workspace. For filmmakers studying the underlying generation techniques, the Kling 3 motion control tutorial walks through the production parameters.

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Sources

• Deadline
• Variety
• Screen Daily
• GlobeNewswire
• Asian Movie Pulse