It’s no secret that big cinematic moments like a brave Superman (David Corenswet) fighting against a fire -breathing Kaiju in the latest ”Superman“Or a brave Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson) who avoids the hungry jaws in a Gargantuan Mosasaurus in”Jurassic World: Rebirth“Would not be possible without jaw selection Vfx. Summer blockbuster relies on spectacular images to Koax the audience to theaters, to melody of millions and billions of dollars all over the world. Demand for creative, highest visual effects could not be higher.
It is particularly true in the Asia-Stilla Sea (APAC), where Vfx The industry has increased faster than a quick bullet in markets such as South Korea, Japan, China, India and Thailand. In fact, according to last year Mordor Intelligence ReportAPAC animation, VFX and post-production market size is estimated at $ 196.28 billion 2025 and is predicted to grow at an estimated 346.06 billion in 2030. The report points to increasing content needs, government support and investments, cost-effective productions and technical progress in all driven rapids and technical progress.
It is not only governments that want to build infrastructure after production to meet domestic and international demand, of course. NetflixFor one, has reaped the benefits of spending time and money in the APAC region. Its revenue there has skyrocketed from $ 1.47 billion in 2019 to more than doubled in 2023 to 3.76 billion, the report says. This explains why Streamer continues to make the APAC region prioritized with original films and TV production in Korea, Japan and Thailand -which uses VFX all over the line.
At one end of the spectrum, of course, genre productions that rely strongly on VFX to create an increased or fantastic world. Just last week, Netflix announced that it will produce a live-action version of the extremely popular Korean Fantasy Web tone, ”Solo Living,“With the rising Korean star Byeon Woo-Seok starring in the series about a world where dungeons open across a city and characters can even up to magical classes such as RPG characters.” We will produce that show in reality, so there will be a lot of heavy VFX that will be needed, “says Sung Q. Lee, Netflix’s head of production, APAC, India.
While “solo leveling” falls within the popular iskaiOr power fantasy, genre, the use cases are much wider. At the other end of the spectrum, Thailand-based is limited drama series “Mad Unicorn”, a story by David and Goliath theme of an ambitious but poor entrepreneur named Santi (Ice Natara Noparatayapon) who takes on a massive home delivery company. That show is more founded in reality but benefits thematically by the way it uses VFX to make the visual language of the show more expressive for the characters’ struggle and victories.
In the show’s fourth section, Santi discovers that a difficult rival home delivery company has injected fake packages in the company’s workload to damage the start -up reputation. Santi and his staff realized that the boxes are high in a parking lot and then set the cardboard tower on fire, an act that binds the team to fight the rich competitor. This triumphant moment is not just one of the emotional tent poles in the series, but VFX helps reinforce the moment. “We put the first layer of the real fire, and then extra packages and the fire tower all the way up to the top is made with VFX,” Lee explains. Security was of course part of that decision, but it also shows that VFX growth is not genre-specific but leans to a stronger emotional experience for the audience.
And although there is no argument that APAC’s VFX growth is positive on programming and revenue levels, the question arises as to who will exactly do the work in an area that requires a very specific skill that cannot be mastered by looking at some Youtube videos? Netflix had a solution. “We needed to work really hard to get new people into the industry so that we also help its ecosystem,” Lee said.
In 2022, Netflix took the ambitious step to launch its VFX and Virtual Production Academy in Korea, a program that contains both an educational component in a classroom and an internship for workplace education.
Although there are a variety of skills that come out of academia as well as one -time workshops and training that are found in regions such as Japan and Australia, Lee also emphasized the education is also aimed at niche jobs that require practical experience of working with infrastructure that is too expensive to be mastered on the back of a garage. “We do not see the specific education in other institutions for the unique jobs, and you cannot train yourself because you have to have practical experience,” Lee said.
One such niche job is Pipeline TD (technical manager), which was a dream job for Seoul native Ahyeon Cho. TD’s responsibility is not just about helping to develop and maintain software tools, but also support artists and general troubleshooting in using that software. However, CHO’s academic work at cinema and art at the university level did not give her a way to learn the skills she needed to get her foot in the door for a VFX job. An online community that published about Netflix’s Academy aroused her interest.
“The program review said that they would offer three months in place, practical experience and also provide a lot of knowledge that leans into the field,” says Cho, who would go on to the degree in the academy’s first class 2022 and is currently employed in his dream job as a pipeline TD at Eyeline Korea.
With regard to what the future holds in the VFX industry in the APAC region, a crystal ball may be necessary to give an exact picture as the technology continues to develop and the content appetite is growing more and more gluff. That said, what seems obvious is that the importance of VFX from summer blockbuster to the TV project that is not a genre is here to stay, and we should continue to see the financial and entertainment rewards go up and away.
