“Both in the art as well as in the animation, I have tried to give a unique Chinese style to The Legend of Shangri La”
Prod specs for legend of Shangri-la
The whole production is around 15 minutes, with 18 characters and 13 scenes and over 300 shots. I am the director and art director for this film.
When the movie was conceived, how many people worked on it and for how many days.
“The Legend of Shangri-la” was produced based on the prose entitled ” Peach Blossom Garden” by Tao Yuanming, the famous proser and poet of East Jin Period (prox. 1600 years ago). The movie was conceived in Sept 2009. Nearly 30 CG artists involved in the pre-production, production of the film for 6 months.
Comments on the art direction
To best present the rich folk custom and ideal life of the people over a thousand year ago, we chose to use traditional Chinese art forms for the art direction of this film; Shangxi Shadow Puppet, a very popular traditional performing art form in North West of China, as reference for characters, combined with modern advanced CG technology of EFX, thus set the style of the movie as it is now.
The whole set-up of the film is between realistic and artistic. I decided to make the best use of modern CG technology in details, such as water, ripple, falling peach blossons and flickering grass. With traditional Chinese art harmoniously blended with CG elements, I tried to break the limitation the pure traditional painting and provide a brand new visual experience to the audience.
In 1956, when the first colored animation short “Why is Crow Black” produced by Shanghai Art Film Studio won an international award, it was very abjective that the jury thought the winning film was produced in Russia by mistake because of the style of the film. Through this misunderstanding, Chinese animation artists learned that pure imitation of animation of other countries would not benefit the development of Chinese animation. China should has its own style of animation. Therefore, when I decided the whole style of “The Legend of Shangri-la”, I ensured that this film itself would impress the audience that It is a Chinese film.
Your comments on how you feel after winning
I am very honured that the Jury of Digicon 6+2 granted this award to us. We will also submit this film to other internatioanl awards and festivals so that more poeple can see this film and further exchange their expereince with us. I wish “Digicon 6+2” becomes a bigger and more influential award in Asia and in the world.