Beijing Winter Olympics | Ink Art + Digital Technology - Behind the Opening Ceremony "Ink Ice Cube"

Beijing, 4 Feb (Xinhua) -- In the "Five Rings of Ice and Snow" chapter of the opening ceremony of the Beijing Winter Olympics, there is an "ice cube" presented in the form of ink animation. How can this ingenious combination of Chinese culture and digital technology be realized?

On the evening of February 4, the opening ceremony of the XXIV Winter Olympic Games was held at the Beijing National Stadium. The picture shows the "Ice and Snow Five Rings" link at the opening ceremony. Photo by Wu Wei, Xinhua News Agency

Professor Gao Yanmei of the New Media Art High-end Innovation Center of Beijing Institute of Printing and Printing introduced that on November 12, 2021, the school's digital ink animation innovation design team received an important task: to present the opening ceremony "Ice Cube" sports theme animation in the form of "ink art + digital technology".

In accordance with the requirements of director Zhang Yimou to "give the characters traditional texture and life spirit in the form of ink painting", the team framed the previous Winter Olympic sports projects expressed in the animation content, and tried to visually depict them through two forms: rice paper ink hand-painting and digital ink brushes.

Finally, after drawing human figures with brushes on nearly 2,000 sheets of rice paper and practicing brush calligraphy on more than 10,000 sheets of paper, the team used the traditional Chinese method of "visual image taking meaning" to extract the inherent "look" and "wonderful meaning" of the moving human form.

In January 2022, in accordance with the observation opinions of the International Olympic Committee and the revision requirements of director Zhang Yimou to "highlight the texture of calligraphy writing", the team strengthened the "sense of strength" and "sense of writing" of ink humanoid production. After testing nearly a thousand sheets of paper effects and drawing nearly 30,000 frames of digital animation, the digital brush was given the "internal force" of the brush character "strong bone, flying state", while ensuring the high fluency of the movement dynamics in the animation and the full embodiment of sportsmanship.

Gao Yanmei introduced that the main members of the team are "post-00s" graduate students, who have fought for more than 80 sleepless nights to participate in animation design, and have made seven versions of adjustments. Everyone feels extremely honored and proud to be able to use what they have thought and learned to help the animation design of the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympic Games, and to integrate Chinese culture into the classic scene with "ink art + digital technology" in front of the world.

Editors: Wang Hengzhi, Yu Sihui, Cao Yibo