How did an animator who once worked at Foxconn become the director of a popular IP?

Author | Jin Ya Source | Yuli

Summer 2026 sees another new director joining the film world. The animated film To Your Island, releasing on August 7, is directed by newcomer Zhou Haoran, his first theatrical feature.

Last weekend saw sneak previews of two major films, Welcome to the Dragon Restaurant and Odyssey; Spider-Man: Freshman Year and Eight Immortals! continue their strong runs. To Your Island dares to release in this window because this fantasy romance animated film is completely different in genre from the others, and during previews it has earned good word of mouth. In this AI era, if you want to watch a film painstakingly crafted by hand, if you want to be moved by love and family bonds between people, To Your Island is a great choice.

The original novel of To Your Island is a famous IP from Jinjiang. A girl named Wang Jiexiang is carried by an origami crane to a mysterious island, where she journeys with her ex-boyfriend Yin Xian, who has transformed into a rabbit, on a healing adventure. In Zhou Haoran's view, this is a fairy tale like a dried plum candy—the outer shell is coated with sweet, crystalline fairy-tale syrup, but inside it contains a somewhat bittersweet realist story.

Not shying away from the bitterness of life, but willing to believe the world is beautiful—Zhou Haoran's own life also wavers between ideals and reality. A graduate of Tongji University's animation program, he has stood on festival podiums basking in lights and applause, but back in real life he has to survive, to make a living, juggling part-time jobs with creative work. He once became a worker on Foxconn's assembly line, but was quickly pulled onto a different path by Guangxian Animation and Li Yuchun.

The animation industry keeps putting forward new directors. Today let's get to know this story-rich Zhou Haoran, and see how a newcomer director handles a hot IP.

01 From Small-Town Youth to Film Director​

Zhou Haoran's hometown is a very small county in Zhuzhou, Hunan—You County. He grew up in the countryside; his family's cable TV couldn't pick up any cartoon channels, and the only animation he watched as a child was Doraemon. When applying for college, he didn't know how to choose a major and stumbled into the animation program at Tongji University. Once in Shanghai, he realized, "Oh, so this is what the world is like."

"I've always had this inexplicable stubbornness—I figure since fate brought me here, I might as well go for it."

After entering university, Zhou Haoran began catching up on the classic animations of Hayao Miyazaki and Pixar, while also extensively exploring live-action films. This young man, who loved to write stories and had a delicate emotional sensibility, gradually discovered how well the animation major suited him.

While still in school, Zhou Haoran's 3D animated short Harry won awards at festivals in 2017, and his 2021 animated short project Straw Diary was nominated for Best Narrative Short Film at the 15th FIRST International Film Festival. These accolades encouraged Zhou Haoran to persist on the path of animation, but behind the awards lay very real issues: where would the investment come from? How would he survive?

Zhou Haoran says he is very conflicted, constantly torn between working a regular job and creating. "Animation directors like me who live from meal to meal save up money by working; when I feel like there's a story I want to tell, the urge to tell it drives me to quit my job and start working on shorts. Then often I run out of money while making the short and have to go back to work. I keep bouncing back and forth between a state of supporting myself through a day job and starving myself to create."

During his student days, Zhou Haoran was encouraged by seniors to submit his works to investment forums and film festivals as much as possible. The biggest goal was to let people see that there was a young animation director named Zhou Haoran out there.

After FIRST, Zhou Haoran was indeed noticed. One day he received a direct message on Weibo from a staff member at Guangxian Animation, saying they had seen his short works online and wanted to invite him to Beijing for a meeting.

"Is this a scam?" was Zhou Haoran's first reaction. But when they discussed buying plane tickets and booking hotels, he realized it probably wasn't a con. After arriving in Beijing, Zhou Haoran soon met with Guangxian chairman Wang Changtian and Guangxian Pictures CEO Li Xiaoping.

"The common animation types are still mostly myth-based, but the scripts I write are more modern fantasy. So after we met, I told them about my upbringing. After learning about it, they thought the novel To Your Island might suit me well. I got the novel that same day, and after reading it I found that Wang Jiexiang's background is quite similar to mine, and the story between her and Yin Xian was very touching. So I wrote a detailed proposal and sent it to them. After discussing it, they liked some of my ideas and gradually decided to let me take on this project."

After receiving this opportunity, Zhou Haoran started to focus on making the film. But animated films have long production cycles—from confirming the intention to actually starting work, a year and a half passed with slow progress. At that time Zhou Haoran was very anxious, thinking his directing path had come to an end, so he went back to working.

As a child, Zhou Haoran was a left-behind kid. His parents had always been working in Shenzhen, living in urban villages. The rental room where Wang Jiexiang and Yin Xian live in To Your Island looks a lot like his parents' place. To save on rent, Zhou Haoran went to stay with his parents. His father was a night-shift taxi driver, and his mother worked at Foxconn. This time he chose to follow his mother and work on the Foxconn assembly line.

On the Foxconn assembly line, you couldn't bring your phone. His job was to scan barcodes on over 8,000 phone chargers a day, earning 25 yuan per hour. But after the labor agency deducted fees, his take-home pay was 17 yuan per hour.

After a few days on the assembly line, a turning point arrived.

A friend from FIRST introduced Zhou Haoran to Li Yuchun's studio, inviting him to direct the music video for Li Yuchun's song Five Viscera and Six Bowels. When Zhou Haoran went to meet Li Yuchun, it happened to be the anniversary of her debut, and she was having hotpot with her team. Facing his idol, Zhou Haoran was nervous, but his drive was strong.

"I always feel like a kid, and that inexplicable stubbornness kicked in again—I figured since I'm here, let's go all out. So I talked very sincerely with Chun Chun about my creative ideas. Chun Chun was really nice, and we clicked immediately. In the end, she entrusted the job to me."

Now Zhou Haoran jokes, "I'm very grateful to Teacher Li Yuchun for rescuing me from the assembly line."

02 Newcomer Director and Hot IP​

Meanwhile, the To Your Island project also resumed moving forward. Zhou Haoran soon moved to Beijing and began an office-based creative life at Guangxian Animation.

Why did a new director who had only made shorts get the chance to direct this hot IP? After talking with Zhou Haoran, the Yuli studio found the answer.

Like the protagonist Wang Jiexiang, Zhou Haoran grew up in the countryside as an emotionally sensitive child. When he was little, he would ride his bike to and from school along a road flanked by rice fields. He turned this childhood memory into a fairy-tale image in the animation, placing it in Wang Jiexiang's growing-up memories.

Every summer vacation during his childhood, Zhou Haoran would go to Shenzhen to reunite with his parents. He couldn't go to work with them and, so as not to disturb the roommates' privacy, he couldn't watch TV either. He could only hole up in the tiny rental room with nothing to do. Later, as an adult director attending film festivals everywhere, he seemed glamorous to outsiders. But when he returned to the Shenzhen rental to stay with his parents, he realized he was thirty years old and still hadn't given his parents a good life. What he felt was a heartache, sitting in that room not knowing what to do—when talking about this feeling, Zhou Haoran's eyes reddened.

"Every time I attend a film festival, I see the very glamorous side of the world. But deep down I'm still a country kid, and all I see is the crowded, bitter side. So my perspective is rather fragmented." This upbringing gave Zhou Haoran a pair of eyes good at seeing both sides of the world—beauty and splendor on one hand, isolation and hardship on the other. And this is likely exactly what aligned with the To Your Island project—the film constructs a world where dreams and reality interweave.

Zhou Haoran describes To Your Island as a dried plum candy. The story is coated with a layer of fairy-tale, cute, crystalline syrup, but inside it contains the bitterness of reality. He uses his own attitude toward life to adjust the ratio of sweetness to pain.

"First of all, I won't avoid the pain in our reality. Because I've seen some of the suffering in the world since I was a child, I won't turn away from it. But I think as an animator, I'm always willing to believe the world is good. I want to use the youthful, pure, innocent perspective of animation to tell such stories, and in our own way heal all the wounds of the characters in this film.

"So I won't shoot this story in a heart-wrenching way. For example, when Yin Xian says 'I don't have a home,' Wang Jiexiang draws him a house. I would also approach the story that way. I always hope to use gentle, fairy-tale brushstrokes to soothe the more piercing pains of reality."

To Your Island is an animated film "handcrafted by old methods." The project went through more than 2,000 days and nights of creation, and the film contains many scenes that were extremely difficult to produce.

"For example, the urban village sequence—the house emerges from the water, and then buildings start being built around it. That part was very complex; we worked on it for over a year. And the reveal that Wang Jiexiang has already passed away—that's a long take—we worked on it for nearly nine months. Also, there's a special art style: when raindrops enter the frame, there's a kind of strand-like simulation effect, as if things are getting wet and blurring, giving the audience a sense of memory. That also took a while to develop."

In the process of overcoming these difficulties, Zhou Haoran often felt like breaking down and giving up. At those times, he would go to Ditan Park near Guangxian Animation to sit for a while. After an hour or two, he would regain his inner peace and find the courage to start again.

In recent years, the animation industry has seen a surge of new directors. Newcomers like Zhou Haoran can finally be seen by audiences because of their passion and persistence.

"We have to balance economic and worldly issues, but we still have creative dreams in our hearts. So everyone has to go through a long, painful, agonizing, lonely creative process. Everyone is lovely in that they always feel there's light ahead—just a little light, and we can keep going. Those who persist through this process may be noticed.

"Especially animation creation—it's really a job that takes an extremely long time. If along the way you waver even a little, or feel that this thing isn't particularly meaningful to tell, and you haven't found the core of your creation, then many difficulties will knock you down. But every time I think about the points in the film that moved me, I feel this story is good, and I'm willing to devote six years or even longer to making it. I have to start from my own heart, find the root of my creation, so I can endure these barren times."

03 From Text to Animation​

The original novel of To Your Island is a popular online IP. Adapting it from text to images means first having to pass the test of the original book's fans.

Zhou Haoran's adaptation principle is to respect the original work, focusing as much as possible on the emotional main line between Wang Jiexiang and Yin Xian within the limited runtime, and recreating as many iconic scenes as possible. However, due to the film's length, some cuts and changes had to be made. The original author, Fan Dawang, also personally participated in the script adaptation this time. Together, the director and screenwriters slimmed down the main storyline.

During adaptation, Zhou Haoran realized that using animation to present a love story has the advantage of always keeping the perspective of a young person's purity and innocence, which might bring a refreshing feel to a romance. The scene in the high school room where Wang Jiexiang draws a house and a swing for Yin Xian, who says "I don't have a home," is a very animated expression. Also, the premise of the male lead transforming into a rabbit naturally suits the animation format.

The little rabbit version of Yin Xian in To Your Island is designed to be very cute. The director revealed that the rabbit has many of Yin Xian's characteristics: "For instance, the distance between his eyebrows and eyes, his flat upper eyelids, his mournful eyes, even a bit of dark circles—all subtly correspond to the real Yin Xian."

When working on the "island" portion, Zhou Haoran also deliberately emphasized the contrast in the relationship between the two characters through design—in reality, Yin Xian is a block of wood, but the island is his inner world, where he can talk more. In reality, it seems Yin Xian is dominant, with Wang Jiexiang always following behind him. But on the island, this dynamic flips: the little rabbit asks Wang Jiexiang if she can save him, but she deliberately refuses. The little rabbit can only trot after her, with his short arms and legs, but can't keep up. This creates an inexplicable sense of humor and satisfaction.

On the other hand, the narrative structure of a novel and the audiovisual language of animation are two completely different systems. The subtle, delicate aspects of love present a whole new challenge for animation.

"Text leaves a lot of room for imagination, but images are definite—it's either there or it isn't. In text, I can imagine Yin Xian's restrained and hidden love for Jiexiang. But in animation, how do you show the turbulent emotions beneath a calm exterior? How do you accurately capture those complex, subtle things within a very narrow range? That's very difficult.

"So while keeping Yin Xian's avoidant attachment personality trait, we still want the audience to know that Yin Xian loves Jiexiang. To make his love visible, we designed some details for him in the film.

"For example, when he says the line 'The juicer company—nobody wanted it, so the boss gave it to me,' his eyes dart away, and his hand scratches his head—these expressions make his tough exterior and soft heart visible. Another example: he 'scolds' Jiexiang while applying medicine for her. When she argues with him and runs to the overpass crying, he follows her, still keeping his mouth shut but silently holding a flashlight to light her way. When Jiexiang asks him why they're together, he says it's to make each other's lives more convenient. Between the word 'convenient,' he pauses for a breath, which makes you feel he's saying something against his will in the heat of an argument—it's not what he really wants to say. All of these are details we hope allow the audience to see the boy's restrained and hidden love through his actions and behavior."

The scene where Wang Jiexiang and Yin Xian reunite in the thick fog to give the rabbit is the one that left the deepest impression on Zhou Haoran. To express the turmoil beneath calmness, to capture the complex and subtle elements, behind it was the collaborative work of over a dozen animators.

"When he sees Jiexiang again, Yin Xian has already aged. His frail body and restrained personality dictate that we must put a very strong emotion beneath a calm exterior. How do you express 'infinity' within 'nothingness'? The range given to animation is really small. We shot a lot of reference footage. Over a dozen animators filmed many takes, and then we selected the best parts from each.

"One colleague blinked very slowly with subtle pupil movements, which seemed to convey more shock and stupor. Another leaned forward slightly, stretching out their neck a bit, which seemed to help show anticipation. Another added a sudden, distracted look of panic before delivering the line 'Pangpang, I bought the rabbit,' which was also great. We spliced together the best parts from everyone, and that's what you see in the film. In live-action, actors can let their emotions flow naturally; in animation, every blink and head-turn is actually the result of careful deliberation by the animators."

When talking about this scene, Zhou Haoran couldn't help but get teary-eyed. To Your Island is described by many fans of the original book as a "tragically beautiful" story, but Zhou Haoran hopes the feeling the film leaves the audience with is warmth and strength.

"Some people also discuss: if we're destined to part, then what is the meaning of meeting? I often feel disappointed in human relationships myself, and often doubt whether love really exists and whether it can last. Making this story, especially the final scene of the film, gave me a lot of courage. When the elderly Yin Xian visits Jiexiang's grave, he finds the small flower she embroidered for him inside his sweater—it's called the winter daphne flower. This small flower is like a sun, illuminating their universe, telling the audience that love truly exists in our world. The winter daphne flower existed in their love, and the character Wang Jiexiang existed."

In the film, due to his childhood experiences, Yin Xian never developed a proper way to love. He is a beginner in love, and by the time he understands it, it's already too late. After that, a part of his life is taken away by that rain, and he spends the rest of his life in remembrance.

The story presented in the film is very dramatic. Zhou Haoran says, just like a line from The Curious Case of Benjamin Button: "We're meant to lose the people we love. How else would we know how important they are to us?" He hopes To Your Island can also bring the audience this strength and reflection. After watching the film, return to reality and think about how to love the people around you.

---