01. The Lion of Controversy
Looking back at the national comic films in recent years, you will find that "traditional culture" has become a universal topic.
As descendants of Yanhuang, those things and things that have been refined over the millennia can easily impact our hearts; and after the animation people's meticulous carving, these already shining traditional cultures can shine with new brilliance and be admired by the audience.
With the advancement of animation production technology, we have long been able to turn mythical and legendary characters and scenes into reality, and give them to modern people aesthetics, so that they exude endless charm.
Even if some animations are not satisfactory in the plot, the meticulous modeling can make every audience intuitively feel the hard work of the creators and arouse the national pride in their hearts, which is the reason why more and more national comics can gain a foothold in the film market.
However, in the upcoming year of 2021, there is such a national comic film --- "Lion Boy", but chooses to "do the opposite".
Although this animation is based on the lion dance culture of Guangdong and has a solid traditional cultural heritage, it abandons the mainstream fairy tales, myths and fantasy themes, and approaches the realistic field that few people in the history of 3D national comics have set foot in.
This kind of realism is both its selling point and its controversy.
At present, the public opinion center of "Lion Boy" is still the appearance of the three protagonists who are different from the mainstream Internet red face, Beautiful Man face or Japanese man face: Ah Juan's eyes are small, the eye distance is larger, the cat shape is bad, full of teeth, and the dog is fat and slightly sluggish.
In the view of some netizens, at the moment when modeling technology tends to mature, whether creating such an ugly character is insulting the Chinese people, or insulting the Cantonese people of its prototype.
With the spread of public opinion, the audience's view of the modeling of the protagonist's three people is polarized, and through the media survey, it is found that the starting point of public opinion finally points to the director of "Lion Boy--- Sun Haipeng.
In an interview with the media, he said that the maturity of animation technology allows us to create a lot of fantasy scenes, but in the field of realism, the national comic is almost a blank.
To this end, he wants to create an animation that is close to reality and has a pyrotechnic atmosphere; at the same time, he also wants to change the current situation of the audience blindly pursuing the aesthetics of Internet celebrities, and enrich the diversity of animation with counter-mainstream aesthetics.
The end result is these three protagonists who are deeply involved in the dispute over appearance.
Obviously, the design of the three protagonists is carefully considered by director Sun Haipeng, and this bold attempt not only stems from the above ideas, but also from the collision and interweaving of reality and heart countless times in his 18-year career.
02. An ordinary person who works hard creates a realistic story
Sun Haipeng graduated from Hubei Academy of Fine Arts, and the reason why he was able to get acquainted with animation was purely an accident.
During college, Sun Haipeng's major was related to watercolor, due to the limited access to employment, so he taught himself three-dimensional software, and after graduation, he also went to work in an advertising agency, and in this period, out of responsibility and enthusiasm, Sun Haipeng found everything to learn, becoming the "golden oil" in the eyes of colleagues, and because of this process, he also mastered the skills of animation production.
With the wave of migrant workers going south, he came to Shenzhen and worked for an animation company, tired of some experience in making animation.
Subsequently, Sun Haipeng came to Guangzhou to develop and set up his own small team to undertake some animation projects of the TV station. But over the years, the salary earned by doing animation has only been able to make a living. In the more than ten years of living in Guangzhou, he was gradually infected by the fireworks here.
As stated at the beginning of "Lion Boy", the lion dance is this excellent folk art, there is a distinction between north and south, and the southern lion is also known as the awakening lion. In the southern region, lion dances are held during festivals or major celebrations.
During this period of living in Guangzhou, Sun Haipeng can often watch the lion dance performance during the opening of new stores or holidays, but the lion dance at this time is only a boring program for him.
It wasn't until one year, when his family rushed from Hubei to Guangdong to spend the Spring Festival with him, when they passed a shopping mall, the atmosphere of the lion dance team celebrating the Spring Festival deeply touched Sun Haipeng.
At this time, he only understood that after hundreds of years of inheritance, the lion dance has long been sublimated from a folk program to an artistic culture, and the reason why it can endure and resound throughout the world is because every Chinese has a male lion in his heart, and whenever the gong and drum sound, the male lion will awaken people's nostalgia.
Later, after online consultation and field visits, he learned that in Guangdong, there are still many rural areas that still retain the ancient lion dance culture. Those young people who learn lion dances, most of them are left-behind children, due to the lack of parental care, they are usually straightforward and unrestrained, in order to let these naughty teenagers settle down, the older generation will send them to the ancestral hall to learn lion dance.
As a result, these teenagers attend classes during the day and study in some ancient ancestral halls at night. For them, the lion dance is not a solemn and lofty thing, nor does it regard the inheritance of China's excellent traditional culture as its own responsibility.
The reason why they dance lion heads and beat gongs and drums is just to be coaxed in by the elders of the family to learn a skill and kill time.
After graduating from school, most of them will follow in the footsteps of their parents and work hard in a large economically developed city. And this is the prototype of the three protagonists.
It was infected by lion dances, rural areas and teenagers, which are very pyrotechnic and full of vitality, that Sun Haipeng came up with the idea of creating an animated film based on these three themes.
Having said that, he does not want to imitate the current mainstream and make a myth and legend, but wants to be completely realistic and make a realistic story of ordinary people's struggles, so as to impress every audience.
As an animation creator, Sun Haipeng never limits himself to one place to draw nourishment. In addition to some popular American and Japanese comics, he also loves the films of Stephen Chow and Wong Kar-wai, and learns the photography techniques, life atmosphere and character shaping in them.
Therefore, in "The Lion Boy", we can feel the taste of Zhou-style comedy and the king-style lens language, real and spiritual, so that the image of each character is unconsciously neutral.
"Youthfulness" is the most abundant element in the animation, Ah Juan, Ah Cat and Ah Dog from being bullied, being looked down upon, to contact the lion dance after the beginning to overcome difficulties, gradually grow, and finally realize themselves;
Master Xianyuqiang once gave up the lion dance, but in the process of teaching the three protagonists, he heard the true thoughts in his heart, and once again ignited the youthful spirit in his heart and went out to fight the lion dance.
The same is true of Sun Haipeng.
Although he graduated from the University of Fine Arts and received the influence of art, before that, Sun Haipeng was actually just a simple small-town youth, who grew up in Huji Town, Zhongxiang City, Hubei Province, without outstanding talent, and went to the city to study after twelve years of hard study.
After graduation, along with countless fresh graduates, he first became a screw in the city (Sun Haipeng worked a lot of odd jobs before entering the animation industry), and during this time he lived a hard life of sleeping on the floor and renting a basement.
After officially entering the animation industry, he also worked in obscurity, and only some practitioners occasionally noticed his name in the end of some animation and the list of winners. It wasn't until I made my own achievements that my work gradually improved.
Before the production of "Lion Boy", Sun Haipeng already had his own series of animation --- "Bao Qiang Series".
Since 2007, he has created a series of "Bao Qiang" animated short films. When 3D technology was just starting out in China, he showed his superb and flexible modeling, which won a huge response on the Internet.
After accumulating experience, he formed a team to create the "Food Adventure" series. For Zhang Haipeng, the series is not just an animation for people to entertain, but intends to be regarded as a Chinese original animation work that is shoulder to shoulder with Hollywood.
At this time, Sun Haipeng, like other domestic animation creative teams, sought inspiration from myths and legends and did not tell human stories. From the perspective of character settings alone, this animation still cannot escape the fate of being labeled as "young age", but compared with other young domestic animations, its story embodies the painstaking efforts and enthusiasm of the creators and the strong Chinese characteristics.
The story of the "Food Adventure" series takes place in a magical food world, based on the myth of "Nuwa made man", telling the story of a chef named "Nuwa" who uses ingredients to create food with seven passions and six desires like people (even natural landscapes are made of food), and starts a wonderful adventure across seven continents and seas led by the protagonist Bao Qiang.
("Steaming" under the Western Ocean)
In order to restore the real texture of food, Sun Haipeng directly turned the office into a kitchen (x).
For example, in the movie version of "Hero Stew", bao Qiang and Musashi appear when they accidentally encounter a fire in the bread cornfield on the way, and the skins of these breads quickly expand and burst into pulp after being heated.
Before modeling, he first bought his own bread and put it in the oven to observe the various changes in shape, volume and texture as it expanded. After figuring out the changing patterns, I began to create.
At the same time, in order to harmonize food with Chinese architecture, he used food to try to assemble it after understanding the structure of the building, ensuring that these architectural models assembled with food did not look like they would play, and then modeled it as a prototype.
It is with this craftsmanship and compact plot that "Heroes of Gourmet Adventure" breaks the audience's stereotype of the young age of "inhuman animation".
Whether it is a tv animation or an animated film, the "Gastronomy Adventure" series has won well-known awards or nominations at home and abroad (such as the Annecy Animation Festival in France, which is known as the Oscar for animation), becoming a neglected "light of national comics".
Watching his team gradually gain ground, he also recalled the idea of making a lion dance animation, and when he proposed his idea to Zhang Miao (the producer of "Lion Boy"), he quickly got a reply in agreement.
More importantly, from the role to the scene, Zhang Miao agreed that he could create in a realistic style, but the requirement was to complete the film within two years (because the market direction changed day by day), and at this time, Sun Haipeng's team was only more than 40 people.
In order to be able to deliver the task on schedule, Sun Haipeng and his team invested almost all their efforts, in addition to handing over part of the animation to the outsourcing company, all the special effects and renderings were carried by their own team, and some things were calculated, rendered and other processes were almost completed independently by a few veterans (it is said that it takes 10 hours to make 1 frame).
For example, the hair of the lion's head and lion's tail needs to be modeled and calculated one by one, especially the part of the lion's tail, because the overall structure is not clear at the beginning, resulting in the whole lion dancing is not real enough, and finally after the structure is solved, it is rebuilt back to the furnace to complete the vivid lion in the film today.
In order to restore the most authentic rural scenery, Sun Haipeng's team also traveled back and forth between the company and the filming location many times to observe how the plants in the countryside grew and how the model should be made to restore the most natural texture. The filming alone lasted a year.
As for the appearance of the most controversial character, Sun Haipeng did not deliberately defame anyone's idea, but only created an ordinary, ubiquitous, and life-like character.
And this is also the most important part of the realistic work, if it is designed into the kind of bright eyes in the American manga and Japanese manga, it is easy for the audience to have a sense of separation, unable to substitute for the character, nor can it understand the feelings that the animation wants to convey.
It can be said that Sun Haipeng himself is as youthful as the characters in the animation, and after making a decision, he will put all his efforts into moving forward.
It is this kind of action that allows him to complete an animation such as "Lion Boy" in two years, which is exceptionally brilliant in plot and picture.
It is also the enthusiasm of a teenager that makes him always adhere to the style of realism, and firmly believe that such an ordinary role that condenses the atmosphere of fireworks can touch people's hearts.
03. Conclusion
Born in a small city, worked hard in the city, was impressed by the lion dance, worked hard but was controversial... It is difficult to judge whether Sun Haipeng is like Ah Juan or Salted Fish Qiang, maybe no one is like him, he is just himself.
But 14 years of animation (from the release of the "Bao Qiang" short film to the release of "Lion Boy", a full 14 years) he, like every character in the film, lives with a male lion in his heart, roaring out his inner thoughts in the form of creation.
For the controversy over human design, I think there will never be such a clear conclusion as who is right and who is wrong, after all, aesthetics is a concept full of personal subjectivity.
It is only in the midst of constant debate that I hope that people can realize that the world is not black and white, it has a lot of colors, and only by learning to understand and tolerate can we feel the beauty of it, and the same is true for aesthetics.
I admire director Sun Haipeng for having the courage and determination to bring the roles of Ah Juan, Ah Cat and Ah Dog to the national comic stage.
It is these three less satisfactory characters that allow more people to explore the possibilities of realistic animation.