This talented team from Communication University of China shouts "I hate drawing animation" at graduation season—why?!

“It would be more interesting to let animated characters who are supposed to be ‘made by animators’ experience the pain of making animation themselves.”

On screen, a group of animated characters, in order to help the student who created them graduate, pick up pens and start making animation. Fanqietou, Zhipianfu, Mihuashi, Huzhen, Huawanmeiyou... They divide the work, draw drafts, make revisions, and step by step fall apart under the pursuit of DDLs.

Off screen, the 5 students who made this 17-minute graduation film went through almost exactly the same process: the script was revised six times, key animation was drawn until dawn broke outside the window, and the climax sequence was reworked right before the screening... Until 9 a.m. on the day of the screening, the director was still editing the film.

​Replay Share Like

Donghua XueshupaFollowing

/

​0.5x 0.75x 1.0x 1.5x 2.0x

​Ultra HD Smooth

Why did this wildly talented CUC team shout “I hate drawing animation” during graduation season?!

,Why did this wildly talented CUC team shout “I hate drawing animation” during graduation season?!

​Donghua XueshupaFollowing

In a sense, the group of animated characters chased by DDLs in “Welcome to the Animation Academy” also became a portrait of the creators themselves.

This time, Donghua Xueshupa invited the main creators of the Communication University of China animation graduation short film “Welcome to the Animation Academy” to talk about how these animated characters came into being, and the story behind the work.

01 “Boiling a whole plate of dumplings just for the vinegar”: how one story went through six versions​

“We spent quite a lot of time finding a theme that was both what we truly wanted to express and something more people could understand: the love between a creator and their creation.”

​Feichai：The earliest source of inspiration was an extra episode, “Snow Battle Fortress,” from the Team Fortress 2 (Team Fortress 2) fan animation series “Team Neighborhood.” It tells of two teams locked out of their home because they forgot their keys; one of them throws a snowball at the other side, they start fighting, and it eventually escalates into an “epic snowball fight.”

They shot it in a documentary-like style, making a tiny, almost absurd event feel grand and hilarious, and I wanted to try making something in that absurd style myself.

1. The nature documentary stage: At first we wanted to film our real classmates as if they were animals, imitating the nature documentary format of Planet Earth, depicting the lives of animation students: how they attended classes, how they studied, how they made animation.

Everyone had their own routine. Back then we designed a lot of characters, and even thought about designing different species, personalities, and ways of speaking based on the different roles students were responsible for — for example, “Huawanmeiyou” was given a “glug-glug” bubbling underwater voice, because she lives in the sea.

During this stage, the DDL was just a sudden “natural disaster” that arrived at the story’s climax, not the true core of the story. But because the production workload was too large, we scrapped this version.

2. The music MV stage: During summer break, we tried developing it toward a music MV. At the time we wanted to imitate Bo Burnham’s “Welcome to the Internet” and conceive a story along the lines of “Welcome to the Animals”:

A freshman who had never touched animation arrives at the animation academy, meets students in different roles, and listens to them introduce their positions and tasks following the animation production pipeline. As production keeps progressing and the pace keeps speeding up, he, like real animation students, gradually falls apart.

Then the person who first guided him reappears and asks, “Was this how it was at the beginning?” and takes the student back through memories of how much he loved drawing as a child, how he got onto the animation path through hobby classes and exams, and arrived at the animation academy. Just as the protagonist seems to rediscover his original passion, the guide assigns him an animation assignment — the very first animation assignment our teachers gave us when we enrolled. The moment he sees the assignment, he breaks down again.

From this version onward, we decided: no matter how the story changed, the ending had to have a character shouting “I hate drawing animation!”

But the MV faced the same problem — too much work. So we started thinking of alternatives, and only then did the prototype of the current work take shape.

3. Mockumentary: Looking back, it was a bit like “boiling a whole plate of dumplings just for the vinegar.” Since what we really wanted to depict was the state of animation students facing DDLs and the psychology of gradually falling apart during production, why not just imitate a documentary format and film a group of animated characters going from working earnestly to gradually breaking down.

We chose to have the animated characters make animation themselves because we felt it would be more interesting to let animated characters who were supposed to be “made by animators” experience the pain of making animation firsthand. The script at this stage basically followed the documentary format, driving the plot mainly through interviews and narration, with shot design mimicking real filming as much as possible.

But later we found that if we explained all the setting clearly in a fully documentary way, the film would need to be at least half an hour long, so we decided to shift toward a feature-film direction.

4. Reality show and feature film: After discussing with our advisor, we found that the work’s narrative style was closer to a reality show. So from the third and fourth versions of the script onward, we deliberately adjusted the dialogue and plot toward a reality-show direction.

We tried to recreate the classic reality-show tropes of two people having conflicts and those dramatic moments, like a group of people charging up to Fanqietou saying “we can’t keep going,” “this thing simply can’t be finished.”

But later we realized that if we wanted every character to be vivid and likable within a limited runtime, we couldn’t rely too heavily on these deliberately manufactured conflicts, or the characters would come across as “performative.”

From prototype to the final version, the whole story was actually adjusted over nearly an entire semester; what everyone sees now is the sixth version.

We made a trade-off between reality-show-style personal expression and a broadly accessible feature film: from initially wanting to express the exhaustion and breakdown of the animation production process, we shifted to focusing on the emotional relationship between creators and their OCs (the characters they created). Using the process of breaking down while making animation as the vehicle for this relationship made it easier for general audiences to recognize and accept.

​Linlu: I gave a lot of consideration to audience accessibility. Most of these animated characters have real-life prototypes, drawn from classmates around us. We hoped to treat this work as a graduation keepsake, keeping the people everyone was familiar with and the things we had experienced inside it. But after hearing our initial idea, our advisor warned us that if we simply turned our real classmates and experiences into animation, it would likely be a self-indulgent work no one else could understand.

So we spent quite a lot of time finding a theme that was both what we truly wanted to express and something more people could understand: the love between a creator and their creation.

​Linlu: Actually, most of these characters existed before the film’s creation. The director came “with capital,” having already drawn many related character designs. We barely changed these designs — just slightly adjusted proportions and details before using them directly.

​Feichai：These character designs, and their names, were originally created for a horror game. Because I love horror games myself, and this film was meant as a memento of our four years of university, I took the “mascot horror” vibe of Western horror games and created a set of “mascots” modeled on my classmates at the animation school — and that’s how this bunch was born.

The character designs were made over the summer during the horror-game fan-song MV imitation period; we wanted to write English songs back then, so they all got English names.

The prototype of “Fanqietou” is Fanqiezi, the director of the neighboring team’s Xihuan de Xuezhang Yao Biyele (related reading：Interview | Chaotic yet heartwarming, a “otokonoko animation” dedicated to graduation season）:

When designing her, I thought of three elements — tomato, hot girl, and demon — and let her pick one of the three

Fanqiezi asked if she could be called Animatto Tomagic, I said sure, and so Fanqietou’s full name became Animatto Tomagic.

At first, I just wanted to draw some “non-human” characters, so I designed figures for myself and my friends, and then it spiraled — I kept drawing my roommates and other classmates:

​Linlu：The special one is the protagonist “Xiaomo,” a character the director designed specifically for this graduation project.

​Feichai：Xiaomo’s role is a freshman arriving at the animation academy for the first time; she had no name or concrete design. During creation we found that if Xiaomo were merely a character who enters the story and observes others, her presence would be extremely weak, almost becoming a “useless” character. But we didn’t want to give up on any character, so the script adjustments in the later versions were basically all aimed at strengthening Xiaomo’s sense of being the protagonist.

​Feichai：Actually, no. Xiaomo doesn’t correspond to any specific person, and the student’s experiences in the film aren’t adapted from my real experiences either. As for why I played the student, the reason is a bit funny.

Because they felt this student’s aura was rather “dark,” while I usually like to wear long hair that covers my eyes, making me a better match for the student in temperament — so they had me play her.

​Linlu：The more important reason is that the OCs in the film were originally created by our director based on herself and her friends, so she already has a deep connection with them. Since the story is about the emotional relationship between a creator and her OCs, having the director play this character herself makes it more immersive.

​Feichai：The “behind-the-back throw” actually wasn’t deliberately designed. During filming, I was lying on my back on a stretcher, and purely due to the posture and framing it looked like a “behind-the-back throw,” so we never bothered to explain it.

“Shooting hoops in mid-air” was to convey the character’s “athlete” setting. At the time Xiaoli (the actress) didn’t know how to play an athlete, so I told her: just stand behind me like this, and when I walk forward, do a mid-air shooting motion, and everyone will know you’re an athlete.

In fact, a lot of the content in the film was added suddenly during the creative process. For example, the scene at the opening where the student collapses in front of the computer was originally designed as a rather slow, theatrical falling process, using slow motion to show her gradual breakdown. But when Linlu and I discussed how to revise the opening, she said “why don’t you just die by slamming headfirst into it,” and that’s how it became what you see now.

​Linlu：There was also a runtime consideration here. Our film couldn’t get any longer, and we had to find a way to compress the content, so we needed to convey her breakdown in a shorter, more direct way. Rather than using a long, dramatic slow-motion shot of the student collapsing, having her just slam headfirst into it was better.

​Feichai：The explosion scene came about the same way. While discussing how to write the “play within a play” (the animation the animated characters are making) in the second version of the script, Linlu wrote a title in that spot: “Fanqietou Escapes the Exploding Building.” But when we discussed it with our advisor, he thought Fanqietou was going to blow up the building. We figured that worked too, so that’s how we designed it.

​Linlu：Right, a lot of the plot and content in the film happened through such accidental twists.

02 Five people, 17 minutes: first act the story out, then draw it​

“We idealized animation production far too much at the start”

​Feichai：The way the two of us write the script is a bit like “playing catch.” First I would act the story out, and Linlu would turn my performance and ideas into a script; after she finished, she’d hand it to me to revise, and after I revised it I’d give it back to her, and she’d keep revising — going back and forth like that. So by now, it’s honestly hard to say which specific parts of the script were written by whom.

​Linlu：After we locked the plot and before officially entering storyboard production, in order to check the timing and confirm the director’s vision was achievable, we first made a “live-action animatic.” The director performed, I filmed and documented, and after performing we split the editing work, stitching the performances into a relatively complete version to show our advisor.

​Feichai：This method was suggested by our advisor. Because our film had strict runtime requirements, rather than discovering the film ran over time only after finishing the storyboards, it was better to act the entire story out ourselves first. That way, before officially drawing the storyboards, we could get a fairly direct sense of the film’s rhythm and rough runtime.

When designing the storyboards, we also didn’t fully follow traditional animation shot logic. Apart from the few scenes at the computer, the second and third scenes set in the art studio were actually all deliberately imitating reality-show camera positions. So the film often features rather “tricky” angles, like placing the camera on the tabletop for a big perspective effect.

To draw these scenes and perspectives, we built sets and characters using furniture and blocks from the game “gogh” to find suitable camera angles. But because the 3D camera in “gogh” has a certain amount of perspective distortion, using it directly as a drawing reference wasn’t accurate enough, so Yuchuan, who was in charge of background art, also built a set of scene models in Maya specifically to work out the perspective.

​Feichai：The live-action shots in the film were basically all done by ourselves, and the characters on screen were all teammates from the graduation project group.

The stretcher-carrying scene was shot in a room borrowed from a classmate’s home. Because the room’s original layout made it hard to get the camera positions we wanted, this set of shots was actually mirrored — filmed in the reverse direction, then flipped back in post. To keep audiences from noticing, we removed anything in advance that could reveal the direction, like posters and text.

​Linlu：The high school scenes were shot at Beijing International Studies University. We spent ages looking for a location, only to find that the BISU campus next door looked almost exactly like this.

​Feichai：Actually, as long as you don’t show too much wall and only frame near the windows, it doesn’t look like a university classroom. The four people appearing in the memory are the four key animators in our group — me, Linlu, Xiaoli, and A’hai.

To make everyone look more like high schoolers, I had my parents mail over my old school uniforms from Shenzhen. I’ve always felt Shenzhen school uniforms carry a stereotypical high schooler image; the high school uniform designs in many novels and manga are also fairly close to them.

​Feichai：September–October: we completed the pre-production character art designs and keyshots, finalized in October.

October–February: transition from pre-production to production. Feichai and Linlu completed the script, storyboards, and animatic. Yuchuan and A’hai worked in parallel on backgrounds, props, scene mood illustrations, and other art design; A’hai also worked on character performance tests for Zhipianfu and Mihuashi. Xiaoli joined slightly later, and at that stage mainly focused on adapting to the art style and performance style, such as drawing Huzhen’s character expressions.

There was also some testing work. For example, for the part where characters interact with the animation software on screen, we needed to design the appearance and buttons of these “software” interfaces in advance, decide how to split up the parts, where the character key animation should stop, and where post-production would take over. We initially wanted to do the interface motion in AE, but after A’hai’s actual testing we found it was actually more convenient to do directly in CSP, so the later interface animation was also moved to CSP, with AE mainly handling rendering and post-processing.

March–May: the mid-production key animation stage. We prioritized the key animation for the interview segments, because those shots were relatively short and numerous, with less complex performances — well suited for磨合 the art style and practicing lip sync. Although we had actually already started drawing some key animation during winter break, we made some workflow mistakes back then that slowed progress.

One was that the pre-recording was done too late. We drew a portion of key animation based on the live-action animatic first, then went into pre-recording. But only after the recording was done did we discover that my speaking pace in the live-action animatic didn’t fully match the voice actors’ pace in the final recording, so the key animation had to be redone. For example, for Xiaomo’s big breakdown performance near the end, we had already animated thirty-plus seconds of performance, but because the sound and lip sync didn’t match, we had to redraw it all. Looking back now, the pre-recording should have been finished much earlier, which would have avoided a lot of rework.

​Linlu：The other was a production management problem. We idealized animation production far too much at the start. The earliest production sheet was extremely simple — basically just a schedule and a shot list: who drew the storyboard for this shot, who did the key animation, who did the in-betweens; fill in the names and done.

But once we actually started, we realized this was nowhere near enough. Because our key animation was divided by character — Feichai was responsible for Fanqietou and Huawanmeiyou, A’hai for Mihuashi and Zhipianfu, Linlu for Xiaomo, and Xiaoli for Huzhen. But sometimes three or four characters could appear in the same shot, each handled by a different person. If the “key animation” column in the sheet only had one name, we simply couldn’t tell who had finished this shot and who hadn’t.

​Feichai：In February this problem caused the same character to be drawn twice by two different people, so we realized the workflow had to be reorganized, and everyone held a meeting specifically to rebuild the production sheet.

So the later sheets went down to every single character and every single production step:

Who finished key animation, who finished line cleanup, who finished coloring, and when it could be handed to post — all at a glance. After this workflow was officially settled in March, the whole production actually went much more smoothly.

​Feichai：Mainly to keep the characters consistent. Everyone has their own drawing habits, and it’s hard to guarantee five people would draw identically. Since absolute overall consistency was impossible, we hoped to at least keep each individual character’s overall design and performance style consistent.

For instance, A’hai is better at designs with strong graphic sensibility, so Mihuashi, Zhipianfu, and the many software windows in the film were all her responsibility; Xiaoli’s own drawing style leans more anime, which suits Huzhen.

​Linlu：Of course, even divided by character, everything still had to pass the director’s review; if it didn’t match the character’s state, it would be sent back to be redrawn.

​Feichai：Not so much sent back as I’d step in and fix it myself. Especially during the early art-style adaptation stage, I was quite strict about nailing the characters’ “forms” and performances.

Take Huzhen: although her design doesn’t look complicated, it’s actually very delicate. Move the mouth down a bit, the eyes up a bit, and the face might look especially long. So when Xiaoli first started drawing her, I stepped in to adjust almost every single shot.

Same with performance: the live-action animatic we made stayed in the group chat the whole time; if anyone had no clear idea for a performance segment, they could reference the live-action performance first; and if they had a better idea, they were free to improvise — but they had to watch the animatic first to get the impression.

​Linlu：One month before the screening, we suddenly received notice that the explosion sequence in the film’s climax could not be kept and needed to be revised.

We were devastated, because everything leading up to it had been designed for that final sequence. If the original ending couldn’t stand, a lot of content would need to be adjusted along with it. But at that point our production capacity was stretched thin — the key animators were working back-to-back shifts with no time to rest. Finishing the original content was already hard enough, and now we had to overhaul the ending from scratch — it was practically an “impossible” task.

​Feichai：We were given only three hours from receiving the notice to delivering a revision plan. And that day we had just finished shooting, with more key animation due that night. So all I could do was go back and draw like mad, and I cranked out the version everyone sees now:

This plan actually involved even more work, because it added a lot of characters. I’m truly so grateful to my classmates!

Many of the characters appearing in the explosion sequence were ones we “borrowed” from other graduation project groups — most of them were characters people created during last year’s joint-creation exhibition. We reached out to ask for permission, asking whether these characters could appear in the film as Easter eggs, and almost everyone agreed. Without them, we probably wouldn’t have been able to finish this film.

Afterwards we negotiated again with the studio; they also really liked the plan, so they didn’t raise the price much and cooperated with us on adjusting the division of labor. We handled the character model sheets and key animation, and they completed the subsequent animation, line cleanup, coloring, and rendering. Truly, thank you so much!

Over the following days, we threw ourselves into overtime drawing the key animation of characters popping out, delivering the files to the studio before the weekend — the file size was absurdly huge. Once that was done, we continued pushing forward on our own remaining key animation and compositing work. Looking back now, it actually only took three days — roughly the 24th to the 27th — which seems pretty fast in hindsight, but the whole team was falling apart at the time.

​Feichai：In fact, at 9 a.m. on the day of the screening, I was still editing the film.

​Linlu：We turned it in in a very, very last-minute way. On the day of the screening, I only tested the film’s audio one last time before leaving home.

​Feichai：One night, we were rushing the “play within a play” (the scene where several characters face the school together before the explosion). Partway through drawing, Xiaoli suddenly posted in the group: “Oh my god, I had the lights on while drawing — it’s dawn outside.” Then we all looked out and said, “Ah, it’s dawn.”

​Linlu：The four key animators — none of us slept that night.

​Feichai：Do spend time on pre-production, but don’t spend too much of it. The most important thing is knowing what you truly want to make.

One big reason we revised back and forth during pre-production was my perfectionist streak. I’m the kind of person who needs someone to tell me “this can work” before I dare to truly commit. If the advisor didn’t explicitly tell me a plan was OK, I’d feel it wasn’t good enough and could keep being revised — which is also why Linlu and I clashed during the creative process.

Of course you should listen carefully to your advisor’s opinions, but you need to know what you truly want to make. If there’s something you know you’ll regret not doing, then stick to your own idea and do it.

​Feichai：Making animation is genuinely painful, but after finishing, there’s still a brief moment of happiness.

​Linlu：When the film was screened, I felt it was all worth it.

​Feichai：Right. (During the screening) hearing people laugh — it was all worth it.