40 Million budget?

I watched this movie and somewhat enjoyed it. The thing about Chinese "Anime" is that it's not as wacked as Japanese. I can still relate to it. I mean, I do enjoy something like "Evangelion" or "Berserk", but man the Japanese are good at making no sense in their storytelling at all sometimes.

So I can deal well with a more conventional storytelling. There were some nice action sequences and good camera in Dragons Nest. But this movie looks like it uses technology from ten years ago. The textures and background animations? Terrible. The set pieces - empty. Every game has better looking environments these days. And that's not because it is "cartoony", it was simply a rushed job in places. Even the main characters have less detail than most game models. They are stylized, of course, but still they could have used sub surface scattering and less plain textures to give them more detail and life. Even the hair was terrible, compared to what they could have done.

I can live with that, the movie works and has a good cliffhanger for a sequel. I just wonder how and where the 40 Million were sunk. I mean, this whole project could have been done by a team of 40 people, by the looks of it. In under a year. Did each get a million then? Or do the Chinese simply have huge deficits in 3D animation? I mean, look at "Space Pirate Captain Harlock" - with 10 Million less they made a breathtakingly good looking movie in Japan. Shame that this one had the old Japanese problem with storytelling again...