Qilu Evening News Qilu one-point reporter Guo Chunyu
With the opening of the Beijing Winter Olympic Games, the Mascot of the Winter Olympic Games "Ice Pier" and the Mascot of the Winter Paralympic Games "Snow Rongrong" have sold well into new "top streams". As the mascot of the Winter Paralympic Games, "Xue Rongrong" was inspired by Jiang Yufan, a second-year research student at Jilin Art College, who was born in September 1998 and began the design and creation of "Xue Rongrong" in September 2018, when she was 21 years old when it was finalized in September 2019.
Qilu Evening News Qilu One Point reporter talked to Jiang Yufan and listened to her tell the story behind the birth of "Snow Rongrong".
The red lanterns in my hometown are a source of creativity
In 2018, the Olympic Committee officially solicited mascots for the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games from all over the world, and on September 21 of the same year, the Olympic Committee came to Jilin Academy of Arts and held a publicity activity of "Global Collection of Mascots for the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games and Mascots for the Winter Paralympic Games".
Jiang Yufan and the teachers worked together to conduct research and design
Although he was a product design major, Jiang Yufan, who was still in the third year of undergraduate studies in the product design department of the Product Design Department of the School of Design, had never designed a mascot before, "After the publicity activity, I began to collect information. Most of the Olympic mascots before I discovered were mainly animals, and I thought of the elk, a representative animal in China. Elk is a symbol of auspiciousness, my first edition of the design theme is elk, but the teacher read the manuscript and said that only many students in our school have designed elk elements, the country and even the world is more, so he suggested that I change one. Jiang Yufan recalled that according to some excellent design drafts brought back by the teacher, she found that "objects" can also be used as the image of mascots, and in order to distinguish them from other mascots, she wanted to change her form.
"The design inspiration comes from my own life, and the idea of my second edition of the design manuscript is Chinese knots and dumplings, of which the Chinese knot is because when I was in junior high school, my mother bought a Chinese knot to hang in my bedroom, and the dumplings also represent reunion." Jiang Yufan recalled that the teacher thought that the combination of objects and food was not suitable, and hoped that she would carry out new designs.
"My hometown is Jiayin County, Yichun City, Heilongjiang Province, and is a border county. The new year flavor of the county town is particularly strong. Every Spring Festival, every household will hang red lanterns. I wanted to use lanterns as a design. As a result, the fourth edition of the design draft was born in the warm memories of his hometown, and was affirmed by the teacher, after the design was completed, Jiang Yufan's design was taken to Beijing together with 101 other works, and after many revisions, finally "Xue Rongrong" was born and unveiled as the mascot of the Beijing Winter Paralympic Games.
More than 10,000 design sketches were born "Snow Rongrong"
Recalling this design time, Wu Yibo, deputy dean of the School of Design of Jilin Art College, told the Qilu Evening News Qilu OnePoint reporter that although what was shown was a "snow rongrong", behind this was the unremitting efforts of the entire team for more than 300 days and nights, more than 10,000 design sketches, more than 20 round trips from Changchun to Beijing, and 32 sets of modification plans.
"We have specially arranged a course on mascot creation, talked about the design of mascots for the Winter Olympics, and greatly realized interdisciplinary cooperation, which is also a teaching concept of our school." Wu Yibo said that in order to allow students to get exercise, before participating in the competition, the college first did a data combing, the previous Summer Olympic Games, Winter Olympic Games mascots for classification, such as divided into animal themes, item themes, character themes, etc., have been classified, used to give students a reference. Teachers have also almost given up their own opportunities to participate in the solicitation, focusing all their energy on tutoring students.
Wu Yibo introduced that at the beginning of the design, the theme was set as "auspicious", "warm", and the luminous attribute of the lantern shape of "Snow Rongrong" symbolized lighting up dreams and warming the world, representing fraternity, courage and strength, embodying the fighting spirit of winter Paralympic athletes and the concept of inspiring the world.