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"By the late 2020s, flexible electrodes began taking over nerve endings. Humanity rewrote its neurons, allowing the brain to read the language of circuits — they called it the Cognitive Revolution. From then on, the distance between old and new humans was like the difference between knowing how to use fire and not."

This is the opening vision of a future world from the anime Saibo Yingxiong Zhuan.

On August 15, a video titled "A 60-Year-Old Man Hand-Crafts an AI Anime: Saibo Yingxiong Zhuan" began spreading through the anime community. A cyberpunk future worldview, a boy's survival and struggle atop a wasteland... This 24-minute anime "pilot episode" quickly sparked heated discussion. After going online, the topic climbed to No. 5 on Douyin's overall trending list and No. 3 on Bilibili's hot search, with views across the internet surpassing 10 million.

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AI film label 'Jimeng Studio' launches — do animators' 30 years of 'old craftsmanship' now matter more?

,AI film label 'Jimeng Studio' launches — do animators' 30 years of 'old craftsmanship' now matter more?

​Donghua XueshupaFollowing

And its creator is indeed a gray-haired elderly man.

However, setting aside the gimmicky labels of "60-year-old animator" and "AI-made," what truly deserves attention is still the quality of the work's imagery itself.

Whether it's the cinematography and shot composition, the editing rhythm of the dialogue, the continuity of character blocking and spatial relationships, or the presentation of cybernetic mechanical details, Saibo Yingxiong Zhuan displays a level of polish that surpasses that of ordinary AI creators.

Behind it is a 30-year animation veteran, Zhao Bin, together with his animation studio Yihua Kaitian and the technology of the Jimeng AI platform, in a joint creative exploration.

01 30 Years of Experience, 4 Months of Experimentation, a 24-Minute Work​

Zhao Bin entered the industry in the 1980s, taking part back then in the outsourced production of a large number of overseas animation orders, and later worked on art, storyboarding, and more for many domestic animations. He contributed storyboarding work to the first season of Ling Cage: Incarnation, a landmark Chinese sci-fi anime.

In other words, Zhao Bin carried decades of accumulated creative experience into the AI era.

In the early stages of the project, he still used the traditional animation workflow he knew best: first completing characters, settings, and storyboard drafts by hand, then learning to use AI video tools, hoping to make the images that had only existed in design drafts truly "come alive."

Zhao Bin says the process involved plenty of pitfalls, including more than a few moments that made his "blood pressure spike." One of the biggest challenges was accurately "translating" his years of animation experience into instructions the AI could understand:

How characters move, how the camera travels, how shots connect — everything had to be broken down into sufficiently specific prompts, sometimes even specifying the content of a shot second by second. Only after round after round of generating, revising, and retrying did he gradually work out a smoother creative method.

As the project progressed, Zhao Bin brought in some younger creators more familiar with AI tools to form a small team. In early August, Zhao Bin completed the first version of the pilot; around the same time, his studio Yihua Kaitian noticed this personal endeavor and decided to provide resource support in the mid-to-late stages of the project. Meanwhile, the team kept polishing the work using Jimeng AI's latest video generation model, Seedance 2.5.

From first exploring AI to completing the first version of the pilot took about 4 months; from pilot to final cut took about 20 days.

The prevailing narrative about AI creators today loves to emphasize "teenagers gaining industry attention" and "young people mastering new tools overnight," as if the younger generation easily outstrips their predecessors; and as model capabilities keep improving and the user experience keeps getting better, what people often hear is how AI keeps "lowering the barrier to creation."

But the case of Saibo Yingxiong Zhuan may present an "anti-age-anxiety / anti-replacement-anxiety" side — the fact that this work exists at all, and that many viewers consider it close to the polish of a commercial series, owes everything to this "sixty-something old man's" 30-plus years of animation experience, as well as the production support of Yihua Kaitian as a professional animation team.

AI can certainly already generate polished visuals and shots, but what truly determines the caliber of a work is still often the aesthetic sense and judgment honed by time and experience. Especially when the creative goal shifts from a concept short to a complete work, mastery of character design, camera direction, and narrative pacing remains where traditional film and animation experience proves most valuable.

As AI grows more powerful, the professionalism of creation itself has not been diluted. On the contrary, as creation moves from early-stage conceptual, short, and fragmented experiments toward longer-form content with more complex narratives and higher polish, AI filmmaking is increasingly "falling back" into the comfort zone of seasoned animators and animation teams.

02 Jimeng Studio, a Content Label​

Animation has always been a form of image-making "from nothing." First you build characters and worlds that don't exist in your mind, then, through design, art, storyboards, layout, animation, and editing, they are turned step by step into watchable images.

But traditional animation professionals and teams have long faced a constraint of "grinding away at production" while being "powerless to create." Pre-production demands extensive磨合, trial and error, and iteration; mid-to-late production requires considerable manpower and time; and even after finishing a demo and pilot, actually bringing it to market means confronting new problems of distribution, promotion, and commercialization.

This is precisely the pain point that Jimeng AI's recently launched 'Jimeng Studio' aims to solve.

Unlike simply offering an AI video generation tool, Jimeng Studio positions itself as a label for professional film and TV content, focusing on films and series, seeking AI video projects with further development potential in story, visuals, and expression, and extending its support to both production and distribution.

Seedance 2.5, launched earlier, had already gone through a round of iteration around video generation quality, long-take control, and professional creative capability.

For projects accepted into Jimeng Studio, Jimeng will further provide computing power, production credits, model access, technical testing, technical guidance, and other support, giving creators more room to iterate.

In September this year, the web version of Jimeng AI will also be upgraded further. According to reports, the new version will strengthen canvas capabilities, bringing the product closer to a real professional film and TV production pipeline and allowing traditional workflows like storyboarding, layout, and mood boards to plug into AI creation more smoothly.

Beyond production support, for selected projects Jimeng Studio will also help connect with theatrical, streaming, and short-video platform distribution, and explore revenue models such as box-office revenue sharing, joint distribution, and guaranteed minimum splits. At the same time, it offers industry resources like brand sponsorship, IP derivatives, cross-media collaborations, film festival submissions, marketing promotion, and offline premieres.

At this point, what AI filmmaking truly lacks is not just stronger models, but a complete pathway from idea to pilot to finished work, and on to distribution and commercialization.

Jimeng AI hopes to offer a more flexible creative path outside the existing film and TV production system, letting professional creators' accumulated experience land, in new ways, as complete works and commercial case studies, rather than crudely seeking to "replace" the traditional animation industry.

As Yihua Kaitian, the studio behind Saibo Yingxiong Zhuan, revealed, the company currently leans toward "walking on two legs": on one side, relying on its mature animation industry system to keep producing traditional premium content; on the other, exploring new content production models with smaller teams and faster iteration, leveraging platforms like Jimeng AI.

03 Conclusion​

Currently, Jimeng Studio has fully opened project submissions as of August 26; creators can apply through Jimeng AI's official channels to participate.

This call for submissions is broad in scope: it includes animation teams with mature production experience and industry resources, as well as professional creators such as directors, screenwriters, and artists, and individual creators already familiar with AI tools who possess a unique voice. No restrictions on subject matter or style.

So far, first-batch partners including Shanghai Animation Film Studio, the Chen Liaoyu Studio, Huanyu Entertainment, and Wanzhonghexing Film & TV have already begun exploring with Jimeng Studio. Jimeng Studio has also teamed up with Tomato Film & TV to launch the "Tomato Novel IP Special Support Program," further experimenting with combining AI and mature IP development.

For projects at different stages with different production needs, Jimeng Studio has also established a tiered collaboration mechanism to match varying levels of resource support.

Meanwhile, creators accepted into the "Jimeng AI Growth Program" also receive benefits such as priority project evaluation and 1-on-1 support from the operations team; if a project is further accepted into Jimeng Studio, there is a chance to receive additional support such as direct access to Jimeng Super Creators and Super Membership. For quality original AI shorts that have already been published, free credits, DOU+ resources, and cash rewards will be provided based on the work's reach.

From professional animation creators and teams like Zhao Bin and Yihua Kaitian stepping in, to more film and TV institutions, IP holders, and emerging creators joining one after another, the AI filmmaking ecosystem is growing ever richer; Jimeng Studio, through computing power, technical services, and promotion, supports the full-pipeline development of films, series, and promising IPs.

Whether you're an "old friend" who has worked in animation for many years, or a new-generation creator who has just found their own creative language — what Jimeng Studio ultimately hopes to find are stories that someone wants to tell, and that someone wants to watch.

Only when these stories truly enter the market, receive audience feedback, and generate sustainable returns can "AI + IP" go from scattered creative experiments to a genuinely viable commercial path.