3 posts tagged with "Exclusive Interview"

“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.

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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.

This article is reprinted with permission from "Animation Academic Pa".

Author / Qingzhou

Layout / Rinz

The animated feature film Ranbiwa, directed by Li Wenyu and produced by Shanghai Animation Film Studio, was released on April 28. The film is adapted from the Qiang ethnic folk legend "Ranbiwa Steals Fire": In ancient times, humanity had no fire and endured cold and hunger. The son of the chieftainess Awubaji, Ranbiwa, traveled to the sacred mountain, endured great dangers to obtain fire, bringing warmth and light to the world, and himself underwent the ordeal of flames, shedding his monkey fur and tail, evolving from a monkey into a human.

Unlike the mainstream 3D or 2D animation on the market, Ranbiwa employs the extremely vintage rice paper animation technique. The entire film consists of over 50,000 hand-drawn frames and took more than seven years to produce. In the film, ink textures, line draft strokes, and even the creases of the rice paper are clearly visible, evoking a nostalgic feeling of childhood days spent watching Shanghai Animation Film Studio cartoons on TV.

In addition, the film showcases diverse animation forms such as Qiang embroidery stop-motion, stone stop-motion, and paper-cut animation, with a highly distinctive artistic style. The film's score was produced by the Wild Children Band, using ethnic instruments like the mouth harp and Qiang flute. The promotional song, The Absurd Ballad, was performed by the DOUDOU duo, creating a vintage, rustic yet novel audiovisual experience.

Although Ranbiwa shares the ink-wash animation pedigree of previous Shanghai Animation Film Studio works like The Cowherd's Flute and Feelings of Mountains and Waters, it exhibits a unique character distinct from the past, incorporating the author's observations and reflections on contemporary times.

Academic Pa specially invited the film's director Li Wenyu and producer Wang Anyi for an interview, to discuss the behind-the-scenes production journey and screenplay conception of Ranbiwa over its seven-year journey, as well as their views on the future of animation.

01​

"I want to explore the stories behind myths that might belong to ordinary people."​

Academic Pa: The story of Ranbiwa is based on the Qiang myth "Menggexi Sends Fire." May I ask why the director chose this topic initially?

Li Wenyu: I live in Chengdu year-round and have some Qiang friends or friends from the Aba region. Through them, I learned about the legend of Ranbiwa. There are versions called "Menggexi Sends Fire" and "Ranbiwa Steals Fire," with many variations. One thing they are very proud of in this legend is that it reflects the process of evolution from ape to human, which predates Darwin's theory of evolution by hundreds or even thousands of years.

This story also sparked my curiosity and amazed me with their imagination. So far, no animated film has been based on Qiang cultural legends, so I thought I could try doing it.

I asked some Qiang friends, cultural tourism officials, and cultural experts, expressing my creative intention: I wanted to take the core of "evolution" that they take pride in and that interested me — along with "striking stones to create fire" — and reinterpret it in animated form. During field research, I saw many houses with white stones placed on rooftops or above doors — some many stones, some a single large stone. The tradition of "white stone worship" is still preserved in Qiang areas today. I believe it also originated from striking stones for fire.

They expressed support for my idea, and so the creation of Ranbiwa began.

Academic Pa: The film makes some adaptations to the myth, such as downplaying the presence of Ranbiwa's father, Menggexi, and changing Ranbiwa's motivation. What was the consideration behind this?

Li Wenyu: I wanted to present a legend from a different perspective. In the original legend, Menggexi is the fire god and Ranbiwa is his son, so Ranbiwa inherently has an extraordinary identity. But I think myths and legends always depict the protagonist as someone with divine power or help from gods. Could it be that this was just an ordinary person who achieved something through their own efforts, and after being passed down orally, it acquired a mythical aura? I wanted to explore the "truth" behind that.

The Qiang are a very ancient ethnic group with a long history. In ancient tribes, there was a figure similar to a clan leader called "Shibi", who would chant scriptures to bless the tribe, perform sacrifices, spread stories, and teach knowledge. At the beginning of Ranbiwa, I conceived the scene where Ranbiwa, after becoming a Shibi, tells his tribe the story of his youth. But this telling might also contain some fantastical imagination and fabrication.

Throughout the film, some things are real and some are imaginary. I laid some groundwork and distinctions during creation. Every myth or legend has a prototype that gradually evolved into the contemporary version through oral transmission. Perhaps it originally stemmed from the experience of an insignificant person, without any miraculous events. I want to dig out the story behind myths and legends that might belong to ordinary people.

Academic Pa: The film also introduces new characters, such as the little wolf "Doggy" and the girl Ranbiwa saves. Could you tell us about the design ideas behind these new characters?

Li Wenyu: "Doggy" was something I wanted to include from the beginning. Ranbiwa itself is a story about evolution — whether it's evolving from monkey to human, or humans discovering and using fire, it's all about evolution. In a sense, dogs also evolved from wolves. The relationship between "Doggy" and Ranbiwa experiencing evolution together is a parallel, and I think it can also be translated into mutual growth.

However, I was worried that this setting might conflict with Qiang customs. So I specifically consulted Qiang cultural experts. They told me that ancient Qiang were mainly nomadic and had a very close relationship with dogs. Dogs were like family members, playing an important role in production and daily life. In their culture, there are also folk songs and tunes about people and dogs hunting together.

Regarding "Doggy," I also had a personal motive. I once had a dog that passed away from illness while I was working on the film's script. This affected me greatly, and I began to think about the meaning and regrets this life brought me. In the film, "Doggy" has a very large wound on its chest, exactly where my dog had a tumor. So "Doggy" also serves as my commemoration of it.

Although the film is set against a mythological background, its core is about the process of life's growth. The characters also experience three types of companionship during their growth.

The first type is represented by "Doggy," who accompanies Ranbiwa and the audience throughout its life. The second type is represented by the little girl — a brief yet unforgettable beautiful experience that everyone might encounter. The third type accompanies us throughout our entire lives: companionship with the unknown and fear.

On a higher level, I think human civilization has also experienced these three types of companionship. Many creatures have accompanied humanity for a period, and when humans no longer needed them, they exited the stage of history. But we should remember these lives that once accompanied us. Even in modern times, humans face various fears and unknowns. I believe that if people can bravely explore the unknown and overcome fear, even if they don't achieve any particular goal, it is still a remarkable form of growth.

02​

Using the Language of Animation to Make a Film​

**Academic Pa: The production adopts a relatively traditional and now rare hand-drawn rice paper animation technique. Could you introduce the production process for this kind of animation?**Li Wenyu: I've used many forms in my past short films. This time, using rice paper hand-drawing was decided after experimenting with various methods. Because of the need for a hazy texture that suits the visuals, I chose to draw on rice paper to achieve the breathing feel of water and ink on paper. The production process first uses a computer graphics tablet to sketch the rough animation, which makes it easier to check the motion rhythm. After laying down the rough draft on the computer, I transfer it to paper. The specific transfer process went through repeated exploration.I ultimately adopted two methods. The first is to use an older LCD monitor as a light box. Monitors have a wide thick bezel that can hold the paper in place. Then I adjust the software window to the right position, place the rice paper over the window, and draw on it. This solution addresses both positioning and tracing issues, while also making the final drawing on rice paper more accurate.The second method is to print the electronic rough animation draft with very light ink, then overlay rice paper on the printout and continue drawing. Adapting to the conditions, I ended up using a combination of these two methods.**Academic Pa: Besides rice paper animation, Ranbiwa also presents rich forms of animation such as stone stop-motion, Qiang embroidery stop-motion, paper-cut animation, oil painting on glass plate animation, and sand animation. Each form is quite difficult to produce. Could you introduce how these animations were planned and created?**Li Wenyu: I wanted to convey a rough and rustic feel. Take stone stop-motion animation as an example. I wanted to make it look like children playing with stones. Additionally, stones are a running thread throughout the film. "Doggy" likes to play with stones, the white stone that plays a key role is also a stone, and I thought: since the little monkey and the wolf don't share a language, couldn't their communication be achieved through arranging stones? So I chose stone stop-motion animation to show their communication.The Qiang embroidery part was indeed very difficult to produce. The approximately 40-second Qiang embroidery animation you see might be the 40 seconds with the longest production cycle in the entire film.During the planning stage, we considered that since the film is ultimately a Qiang story, it would be best to incorporate some Qiang-unique art or craft. After investigation, we found Qiang embroidery very representative, but I wasn't sure how to present it in the film. It wasn't until July, when I went on a field trip to the Ruoergai Grassland in Aba Prefecture. It was the flowering season, and the endless sea of flowers gave me a strong visual shock. It's different from the undulating grasslands of Hongyuan in the Aba region — very vast and boundless. I thought, if we used Qiang embroidery, could we convey to the audience the shocking feeling Ranbiwa experienced when he first saw the flower sea? The audience would also feel that visual charm.In the end, the Qiang embroidery animation in the film doesn't follow a narrative logic but adopts a visual logic, showing various transformations — from seeds falling to flowers blooming — conveying a lively scene. But its production process was indeed difficult. First, I designed a four-way continuous pattern, which itself took a lot of work. After designing, I had Qiang embroidery inheritors produce it, resulting in about 270+ embroidered pieces. After embroidering, I had to iron them flat and scan them. Because the embroidered works have a certain thickness and may distort, some of the four-way continuous sections didn't align properly. I had to constantly adjust details in the software until it finally became a complete animation.**Academic Pa: Besides the variety of animation forms, the film's artistic style is also very distinctive. The use of positive-negative shapes nesting into each other, outlining each other, and transforming into each other appears multiple times, creating a strong dreamlike feel. How did you design these visuals? Is this technique a consistent preference in your work?**Li Wenyu: Yes, I quite like positive-negative shapes. I've used positive-negative shape visual forms in many short films before. Specifically for Ranbiwa, one of my creative intentions was to tell an animated story using the language of animation.**In fact, the language of animation is very rich. It's used more in some short films, but it basically disappears in commercial theatrical films. I wanted to try bringing the language of animation into a theatrical film. The various materials and forms of animation I mentioned earlier are all attempts at the language of animation that we considered and adopted.For example, before the title "Ranbiwa" appears at the beginning of the film, there is also a segment of positive-negative shape animation. The main subject of the frame changes from a mouse to a fox, then to a wolf, and then to a bear. It shows the food chain in a dangerous jungle. But when I first wrote the script and the first version of the storyboard, the expression was more concrete. After finishing it, I looked back and found it a bit dull and also somewhat heavy on workload.Was there another way? I thought of using positive-negative shape transformation. It could both show all the dangers of the jungle food chain — the law of the jungle — and express this information in a very short time.Of course, this attempt also has risks. We've become accustomed to film language. Things like animation's metamorphosis and cycles might not be straightforward enough for everyone, easily causing confusion about what's going on. But we still hoped to let everyone understand that animation has various possibilities, that animation is diverse and full of imagination. So we insisted on this expressive method.**Academic Pa: There is a segment in the film where well-known paintings from ancient and modern times, both Chinese and foreign, flash by quickly. How should we interpret this?**Li Wenyu: In terms of the story, this is the turning point where Ranbiwa begins to walk upright, also symbolizing a great leap in human evolution. The animation shows the many days and nights Ranbiwa experienced. Corresponding to all humanity, this is a very long stretch of history.The Qiang myth of Ranbiwa not only reflects Qiang and Chinese history but also corresponds to the evolutionary history of all human civilization. So I selected representative paintings from art history, both Chinese and foreign, across ancient and modern times — from primitive cave paintings to ancient Greece, the Renaissance, Chinese traditional painting, and then to modern computer painting. They are combined to symbolize the long river of human evolutionary history. Through this rapid flash, I condensed the evolutionary process of human civilization into a microcosm.

03​

**The Soil of the Nation Nurtures Catchy Music​

**Academic Pa: Apart from the visuals, the film's music is also impressive. The film score was primarily completed by the Wild Children Band. How did you originally think of collaborating with them?**Li Wenyu: The collaboration with the Wild Children Band came about through an opportunity. Ranbiwa was shortlisted for the FIRST International Film Festival in its early stages, and the Wild Children Band were the performing guests that year. Our producer felt that the Wild Children's music style naturally aligned with our film — both rough, close to the earth, and with ethnic characteristics.I listened to the Wild Children's anthem "Wild Child" and thought it perfectly matched Ranbiwa, because in the story, Ranbiwa is also a wild child who is not well received, homeless, and wandering in search. So our producer approached the Wild Children Band and expressed the idea of collaboration.The Wild Children Band's biggest concern was that they had never done film scoring before; they had always been making original songs. The creative process indeed encountered some bumps. When I heard the first version of the score, each track sounded great on its own, but it was hard to use an entire track directly in the film, since film scoring differs from independent music. Later, we went through many collisions and invited composer Huang Lei to assist. With meticulous design in music editing, we finally achieved the effect presented in the film, and I was very satisfied.**Academic Pa: The film's orchestration uses many ethnic instruments, such as the mouth harp and the Qiang flute, which are uncommon in film scores. What was the consideration behind this?**Li Wenyu: During the film scoring period, we went on a field trip with the Wild Children Band to the local area. We went deep into the Qiang stockaded villages in the mountains to communicate with the Shibi, deeply understanding the local culture, listening to the melodies of the Shibi's chanting and different versions of the Ranbiwa story being sung.We also listened to many local folk songs that have been passed down for a long time, drawing a lot of inspiration from them. Not just instrumental sampling and variation, several songs in the film use Qiang folk songs as melodic motifs. For example, "The Hunting Song" is a song that Qiang people used to hum while hunting, describing a person's life from age three onwards, including the process of going hunting in the mountains accompanied by a dog.**Academic Pa: DOUDOU's promotional song "The Absurd Ballad" for Ranbiwa also attracted many audiences. Could you talk about how this song was created?**Wang Anyi: Ranbiwa strives to follow the heritage spirit of the Chinese Animation School. We hoped to make breakthroughs in theme selection, audiovisual comprehensiveness, and innovative expression. Therefore, sound design, especially music, consumed a lot of effort and time and received much acclaim. Many audiences report that the music and sound effects blend perfectly with the visual temperament of the film — it has style and character. The online platform cooperation for the film's original soundtrack album quickly reached an agreement with NetEase Cloud Music.NetEase's Cloud Studio is dedicated to promoting the artistic fusion of music and film, and it's also an original content initiative from NetEase. We jointly discussed the candidates for the film's promotional song. When drafting the list, we immediately thought of the singer-songwriter duo DOUDOU. Their musical style and atmosphere creation were very compatible with the film, and they also have strong influence in terms of promotion.After watching the film, they were moved by the little monkey Ranbiwa's perseverance and bravery, and they also had some empathetic experiences. They quickly produced a demo. The lyrics from the very first version were like that; words such as white stone, dream within a dream, moonlight, road to the sacred mountain all come from the film's imagery. "The night is long and slow, but I insist on chasing the sun in the sky" — as soon as the song starts, it opens the prelude to this adventure. The common point between the song and the film is that in the journey of life, everyone has their own "wilderness" and "sacred mountain," and even more so, they have the "fire" that they know is "absurd" but still pursue with all their might.

04​

**Tradition and Innovation​

**Academic Pa: Currently, various new technologies are driving innovation in the animation industry and among animators. However, Director Li chose the very traditional rice paper hand-drawn animation. Why is that?**Li Wenyu: I didn't initially decide to definitely use rice paper for the animation. I had never done a complete rice paper animation before. When I started shot tests, I tried various methods, from computer brushes to hand drawing, but wasn't satisfied with the effect. For example, I wanted to draw a snowy landscape, but I didn't want to paint it too solid; I wanted to leave blank spaces while also achieving a sense of vastness.Then one day I thought: could I try rice paper? Although I wasn't using traditional Chinese painting techniques or very refined brushwork, I could use the texture of ink and paper to create the feeling I wanted. After trying, I found that rice paper was perfect for the effect I wanted to achieve.**I also tried many other materials, even celuloid, but found that rice paper produced the best results. It has an irreplaceable texture. In the end, I decided to use rice paper for the entire film.****Academic Pa: In your daily creation and in the creation of Ranbiwa, do you use any new technologies for assistance?**Li Wenyu: The development of computer technology is very helpful for our generation of animators. I use many software programs daily — graphic drawing, animation software, editing, effects, compositing — all done on the computer. Some effects in the film are achieved through rigging in AE. The entire rough animation for the film is laid out on a graphics tablet. I think as long as new technology can match the overall style of the film, there's no need to exclude it. Some segments with poor effects were removed during review.New technology can help us improve efficiency. When I first wanted to make a feature film, I considered asking friends for help, but I soon found that with rice paper, everyone draws very differently. The overall art style of Ranbiwa is relatively rough, some lines look very "casual," but even when casually splashing ink, everyone's "casual" point is different. So in the end, all the visuals still needed me to draw or at least finalize and add details. With the assistance of computer technology, we can reduce the workload to some extent and improve efficiency.**Academic Pa: Rice paper animation or ink-wash animation is rarely seen on the market now. In your view, what is the future path for ink-wash animation? Based on your observations, how much do the new generation of animators or animation students know about rice paper animation?**Li Wenyu: I always believe that the diversity of animation is what makes it interesting: 2D, 3D, stop-motion... Even within a major category, there are branches of various styles. Ink-wash animation is one of them. Art should have a hundred flowers blooming; animation should be diverse. If everything ends up looking the same, that would be quite sad, wouldn't it?Among young students, there are also those interested in ink-wash animation. During roadshows, I encountered animation students who came to talk to me, saying that their graduation project wants to use an ink-wash form. I think contemporary ink-wash animation is a style. If you think your content suits this style, then go ahead and do it boldly.Contemporary ink-wash animation is also different from the past. For example, in the era of Feelings of Mountains and Waters, animation pursued more stable frames. But now, with changes in viewing habits, audiences can also accept frame jitter. The frames in Ranbiwa are also jittery, but still within a certain range. The stability of the past also partly depended on the technology at the time: using ink to paint backgrounds, drawing characters on celuloid, and then compositing through multiple exposures to achieve stable animation. But now we can make animation using various materials and mediums — even an iPad can produce great works. The style of animation has been broadened.Personally, in recent years I still mainly draw on paper, but I'm also trying new software, like Procreate, which has basically replaced my sketchbook; Procreate Dreams can produce very nice animation. These new technologies and mediums make creation more convenient and also give animation more possibilities.Academi Pa: Thank you both for the interview! Ranbiwa was released on April 28. If you're interested, please go to theaters and support it. Feel free to share your viewing thoughts in the comments!

“Not only in China — across live-action cinema around the world, many of the great storyboard artists come from an animation background.”

At the time of writing, Biao Ren: Wind Rises in the Desert had scored 7.5 on Douban, ranking first among Spring Festival films; with box office exceeding 1.3 billion yuan, it ranked second at the Spring Festival box office, passing the test of the “wall of masterpieces.”

The manhua’s author, Xu Xianzhe, personally drew a box-office celebration illustration, riffing on the “great worm” meme to congratulate the film.

Many comic artists also sent their congratulations to Biao Ren, along with congratulatory illustrations.

This is a long-overdue highlight moment for Chinese comic-to-film adaptations, and a long-awaited reunion as homegrown manhua returns to the public eye.

Behind the film lies the collective effort of countless crew members, including an animator familiar to many — Fei Si.

He is the director of “Don’t Listen,” the chapter animation short from Black Myth: Wukong, and the art director of the Biao Ren anime OP. This time, he was in charge of the film storyboard for Biao Ren: Wind Rises in the Desert.

Most viewers may not grasp what a “storyboard” is. In fact, this role plays a vital bridging function in film production — it can be called the “communication hub” that links every department and every stage of the process.

Academic Party specially invited Fei Si to share how he came to be connected with the Biao Ren IP, the real behind-the-scenes stories of the Biao Ren film shoot, and the ins and outs of doing storyboard work as an animator.

01 The Beginning of My Connection with Biao Ren​

Fei Si: It started with the Biao Ren animation team wanting a highly stylized OP. I’ve collaborated with director Wu Nian many times, and we know each other’s styles very well, so we decided to try using animation to present the visual style of the rough, hand-drawn, sketch-like texture of the black-and-white comic. After a few experiments, we felt the idea was achievable, and some of the concepts we made back then actually made it into the final visuals.

Fei Si: When Eighth Master(Yuen Woo-ping)’s team began preparing the Biao Ren project, they first read through the comic and the anime. The highly stylized OP left a deep impression on them and planted a vague sense that it was “right” — even the initial project documents and the crew’s profile pictures used screenshots from the OP. Since I had worked on some film projects before, and a producer friend of mine was also involved in preparing the Biao Ren film, that became the opening for me to meet Eighth Master for a talk. I joined the director’s team in its founding stage, exploring some macro directions and concepts.

When working on the anime OP earlier, I had a concept in mind: hoping every frame would carry metaphors pointing toward the plot, so each image could both convey a feeling directly and, upon re-viewing, offer extended layers of information. That approach can only carry so much within the OP’s limited runtime, so after joining the crew, I also hoped to realize many of those unrealized ideas in a larger space.

Besides that, being an animator, I have a fairly accurate intuition about comic adaptations, and I can offer more possibilities when imagining and translating them into live action.

02 The Day-to-Day Work of Storyboarding​

Fei Si: A storyboard is the draft of a film. During pre-production, after the screenplay is finished, the storyboard turns written content into shot imagery — it is the first step in visual presentation, from nothing to something.

In the past, the role of the storyboard varied with the director’s style. Directors with some art foundation or a visual bent tend to need storyboards more, while directors who lean toward the literary or favor on-set performance may not use them at all.

In the present day, the more industrialized a project’s pipeline is — especially high-concept works with strong digital presentation — the higher the demand for storyboards.

Several problems must be solved during storyboarding: First, establishing narrative rhythm — exactly how many shots it takes to build a sequence, what the order and relationships between shots are, what angles to shoot from, and how to block and stage. These require communicating with the director to understand their ideas, discussing with the director of photography, then offering possible solutions and realizing them as concrete, viewable material.

Second, it’s trial and error. For live action, the storyboard only establishes a preliminary impression; even a complete sequence remains far from the film’s final form. Things that seem fine at the storyboard stage can generate new problems when they collide with the various creative ideas realized across departments. Although filmmaking pursues a measure of certainty, everything is in flux, so rather than being certain about what we want, ruling out the directions we don’t want is almost as important. Otherwise, redundant creative and informational clutter piles up and the creative direction is lost.

Third, storyboards also help save costs. A key principle of the so-called industrialized filmmaking process is to use inexpensive stages to test expensive ones, increasing certainty for the stage that follows.

In communication, you always need a more intuitive format to unify everyone’s imagination — yet being intuitive already means it has been realized, and realization comes at a cost. To use an analogy: VFX spectacle, by definition, creates content that’s hard to imagine, and it’s expensive to produce, so relatively cheap previsualization is used to determine the direction of the effects; but previz isn’t exactly low-cost either, so storyboards are needed to settle the creative ideas and decide which parts get prevized; and even the storyboard, intuitive as it is, is still built on top of the literary screenplay, which is even cheaper to execute.

On the economic level, the storyboard serves as an “advance preview” of the entire film. Through the storyboard, the producer’s judgment becomes more accurate — one can even gauge the scale of investment from it.

Overall, storyboarding is a bridging job: it translates the director’s and screenwriters’ ideas into images, gives the director of photography a handle for preparing the shooting plan, gives the VFX supervisor a basis for anticipating previz and VFX workload, and gives the production designer references for choosing more accurate concept art and planning the sets.

One more point: storyboards and concept design sometimes run in parallel. After receiving the script, the color keys(atmosphere key frames) produced by concept design are also integrated into the storyboard, and key scenes designed in the storyboard may have color keys added retroactively as well.

Fei Si: Once the script was locked, the director’s team would meet together — including the director of photography, the production designer, the VFX supervisor, the action director, and the assistant directors. Everyone brought up creative ideas tied to their own departments and offered references. After the director chose a direction, storyboard production began.

There were also dedicated meetings with the director to go deeper into details. After finishing all his work each day and returning to the hotel, Eighth Master would also write text-based storyboards and creative notes. When we communicated, he would take out his handwritten notes and walk through the scenes with them. After the meeting, I would receive photocopies of the notes as reference — I prioritized the parts the director had confirmed, and the rest was room left for me to develop.

Fei Si: True, storyboards usually don’t require being on location, but we stayed in Karamay for three months(laughs). One reason is that the script wasn’t fully completed when filming began — much of the content had to be decided on site.

As a wuxia film built around action performers, Biao Ren is somewhat different from the usual way of storyboarding an industrial film. The script and the design of many scenes were adjusted based on on-the-spot improvisation. For example, if we spotted a beautiful bend of a yardang hill, we’d immediately discuss whether to add a set piece there or move a certain scene over. Sometimes new ways of fighting would emerge during fight choreography, and after confirming they were viable, we’d add storyboards on the fly — time was extremely tight. Many ideas like this came out of on-site collisions, and I could feel the improvisational agility and accumulated wisdom of the older generation of Hong Kong filmmakers.

Fei Si: Many ideas were tried out for the Heiniutan sequence. In the story structure, this segment is an extension of the so-called “playtime”(Fun and Games) — its function is to transform the relationships within the protagonist group, build trust, and also escalate the spectacle visually.

The director’s team had previously considered quicksand, underground caves, a yardang maze, and other options, and in the end we went with fire oil. Because there genuinely is a vast oil field near the shooting location — you can see countless pumps working across the barren plain, and the ground in that area can literally seep oil. We settled on this plan based on the overall tone of realism and credibility, as well as the visual impact of flames in night scenes.

During the discussion phase, the storyboard would also rough out each option so everyone had something to grasp and feel; directions that felt too fake, too abrupt, or too expensive without delivering effect were all rejected.

In the Biao Ren project, the storyboard’s focus was presetting the story’s atmosphere, narrative rhythm, and character motivations. Although I drew action sequences too, they mainly presented key movements and the key creative ideas built on staging and camera work.

When making animation, we put nearly all the action into the storyboard — the more complex the action, the more panels it takes. I believe many of today’s animation creators have built their understanding of action scenes on the wuxia and action films of Hong Kong’s golden age — and the very people who created those classic sequences were right there on set. The specific fight routines and combat were left to the professional stunt team.

This film was, in essence, a process of tradition and industrialization learning to accommodate each other. The Biao Ren crew could be said to have the world’s finest stunt team, with a highly systematic and professional approach to arrangement. Early on, it was unclear at all which parts should be traditional and which should be industrialized.

The storyboard and the director of photography focused on generating excitement through the shooting side — introducing new equipment and new shooting methods with complex staging, striving to produce a fresh presentation on top of traditional wuxia filmmaking. The action-director team, meanwhile, focused on delivering excitement from the concrete action design itself. In the end, all the information converged in the director’s hands, and the director selected the best parts to form the final presentation.

Fei Si: My biggest private motive for joining this project was to learn up close how Eighth Master, the “world’s number one action choreographer,” creates his work. At bottom, I’m an animator, and action-scene design is one of the most important forms of expression in animation. Being able to learn on the job this time was an especially big gain.

The exchanges with the screenwriters were also very rewarding. The Biao Ren writing team included not only Yu Baimei, but also the key creators of Reign of Assassins, Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In, Ip Man 2, and Bufeng Zhuiying — one could say they assembled the strongest lineup of wuxia and action screenwriters of the past decade.

There were challenges too. Because Biao Ren’s schedule ran longer than expected, it collided with the production of the Black Myth: Wukong animation short “Don’t Listen.” During that stretch out in the wilderness, I could only work with the crew on Biao Ren during the day and return to the lodging at night to give feedback on “Don’t Listen.”

Around the delivery stage, the Black Myth producer called to handle the handover, and the signal in the desert was terrible — one second I’d be mid-conversation, the next I’d disappear; I could only climb to the top of a yardang formation to find a signal. Both sides had extremely demanding tasks — it really was a huge challenge.

03 Animators in the Film Industry​

Fei Si: On the subject of media, the process of Biao Ren going from comic to anime to film is also a process of expanding its audience. Compared with anime or comics, film is a stronger medium — more people are involved in the collaboration, more resources are mobilized, and its communication effect is greater.

I think the best path for an individual creator in this era is roughly what’s called IP-ization — taking the work into new media so more people can see it. Of course, games are now an even newer and stronger medium than film, and I also look forward to Biao Ren expanding further into games.

But there are probably things the original creator must accept as well — as the IP grows and more creators join in, the story gradually stops belonging only to the original creator; it produces all kinds of possibilities and, in the end, belongs completely to the audience.

As for how storyboards differ across media: in the animation pipeline, a storyboard absolutely must exist, but a film storyboard can be extremely thorough, or it can be absent altogether. In animation, seeing the storyboard basically lets you picture what the finished film will look like, but a finished live-action film can end up very different from its storyboard.

A live-action film is a torrent of extremely complex information choices. Conditions on set change from moment to moment — every small thing, every small change, the actors’ mental state, even accidents can produce uncontrollable results. The storyboard merely serves as a baseline for communication; as long as the images roughly convey the intent and the key information is accurate, that’s enough. The principal creators are all on set and can exchange ideas directly — there’s no need for the precision and detail of animation drawing.

Also, the trial-and-error function I mentioned earlier is a major difference from animation. Trying every possibility and determining what you don’t want is almost as important as determining what you do want, so the discard rate is much higher than in animation storyboarding.

Fei Si: Mainly storyboarding and concept design. Across live-action cinema around the world, many of the great storyboard artists come from an animation background.

Storyboarding primarily requires the ability to tell stories and the command of audiovisual language; drawing ability isn’t actually the top priority.

Going further, you need a fairly systematic understanding of film shooting — for example, knowing various lens focal lengths, knowing what equipment might be used to shoot what kinds of scenes, and understanding the functions of each department and stage so you can collaborate.

Purely in terms of drawing, storyboards place high demands on perspective. Much of the so-called cinematic feel in a single frame is built through perspective. But after doing it long enough, drawing as a whole isn’t all that important; in the end, it returns to the absolute core: the ability to tell stories.

Of course, communication skills and screenwriting knowledge are also necessary. To design the story’s rhythm, you must have a fairly deep understanding of the script, and share a common context and common tools, in order to establish smooth communication with the screenwriters and the director.

Finally, we pursue a “first-time presentation.” Facing a new project, I don’t want to assemble a scene into a piece of visual work that already exists; I want to create something new as much as possible. How to mobilize all your abilities to present the distinct quality of a momentary flash of inspiration or a stretch of plot through shots — that is what a creator demands of himself.

Fei Si: I think the best way is to take an original screenplay that already has a finished film and, without watching the finished film, draw the entire scene as a storyboard based on the script, then compare it with the finished film. Only by drawing it yourself can you build a genuine feeling for it — you don’t have to confine yourself to copying existing storyboards.

As for working in the field: it relies first on your body of work, second on mature expression, and on professional knowledge as the foundation. In early conversations about collaboration, the other side may not know your abilities yet, but through a shared context they can sense your professionalism, which improves communication efficiency. This factor is invisible but very important.