K-animation is changing. Animation, once perceived as a children-centered genre, is evolving into comprehensive content that spans all age groups based on delicate emotional depiction and cinematic direction. The occult blockbuster Exorcism Chronicles: The Beginning, released in February this year, surpassed 500,000 viewers six weeks after its release, and the 3D animation Mister Robot, released in April this year, also succeeded at the box office by surpassing 10,000 viewers within two days of release.
K-animation is also achieving meaningful results in overseas markets. The King of Kings, produced by Korean VFX (visual effects) specialist Mofac Studios, recorded $57.71 million (about 79.6 billion won) in revenue in North America in May this year, surpassing Parasite's North American box office performance. The government also announced an animation industry promotion plan worth 150 billion won to expand the industry's foundation, and director Bong Joon-ho is investing 70 billion won in production to make an animation about deep-sea creatures, while director Kim Tae-yong has begun writing the screenplay for a feature-length animation based on the play Kkokdu.
At the center of this trend is a technology that has fundamentally changed the way content is produced: real-time rendering based on game engines, so-called real-time production methods. Traditional animation production used an offline rendering method that calculated and output each scene, and after completing modeling, lighting, animating and other work, it had to go through render farm (high-performance computer cluster) operations that took hours to days. This method required repeating the process when revisions occurred, and because the final result could not be checked in real time during intermediate editing stages, it imposed significant constraints on both production efficiency and flexibility.
An animation industry official said, "Offline rendering requires repeating the entire process even for small revisions, which takes a lot of time, and because the final product cannot be checked in real time, directing and feedback are delayed," and noted, "It was a structure in which production time and expense increased unnecessarily."
Real-time rendering is a technology that solves these structural limitations. When an editor modifies a scene, lighting or a character's expression, the result is immediately reflected on the screen. It can be checked in real time like a game screen, enabling repeated experiments and fast feedback, and it can increase both production speed and quality at the same time.
The King of Kings is a representative case that fully adopted this real-time rendering technology. The production team used virtual production, an Unreal Engine–based real-time directing system within virtual sets, to configure lighting and environments on virtual sets and proceeded with production by capturing and adjusting actors' motions and expressions in real time. This method made emotional expression and movement depiction closer to live-action films than traditional animation production.
Mister Robot also applied the same technology to achieve high realism. Subtle emotional expressions such as eye reflections and trembling expressions could be repeatedly adjusted, and lighting tone and camera work could be modified in real time to realize film-level direction. Motion capture technology that reflects an actor's performance onto a digital character in real time was also applied, further improving the efficiency and precision of the overall work.
Successful cases using real-time rendering continue overseas. Disney TV increased production speed by incorporating 3D technology into Big City Greens, and Sony Pictures Imageworks completed an episode of the Netflix original series Love, Death + Robots season 3 in just four months. Weta FX won an Academy Award for the short animation War is Over!, becoming the first Unreal Engine–based work to be recognized for both technical skill and artistry.
In Korea, various works such as Yumi's Cells, Mini Force, Armored Saurus, DinoPowers and Wilbengers have been produced using real-time rendering technology. This technology, which has solved both production time reduction and quality improvement, is gradually becoming the standard in the K-animation industry.