The film's budget was entirely self-funded by Marcus Tozini. It often left him broke with not even enough money to buy groceries for himself.
Creating the butterfly for the flashback scene where the children are chasing the butterfly was one of the trickier shots in the film to accomplish. Butterflies and insects in general usually die out (if they don't hibernate underground) during winter, so it would be rare to see a butterfly in the winter in reality. For the visuals of this scene, a number of shots were created, one being the protagonists as children, chasing the butterfly through a snow filled forest. This consisted of animating the 3D model, over live footage for 6 scenes in total. Done by first tracking the shots, and then by animating the butterfly flying through the scenes in 3D.
Digital blood was created for the kimono scene, as the kimono was of an expensive silk fabric, and adding red blood dye to the actual fabric would have ruined it, as blood stains are hard to get out of white silk. To animate this sequence, the VFX artists tracked the movement of the fabric, then added in the blood stain.