The opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics "Building a Snowflake" session Xinhua News Agency reporter Chen Yichen /photo
In the creative session of the opening ceremony, small "snowflakes" representing different countries and civilizations gathered from all directions to form a large "snowflake", symbolizing that all mankind was connected through the Winter Olympics and left a deep impression on the world. How did this effect come about? Cao Yuxi, one of the visual effect directors involved in the creative, unveiled the story behind the opening ceremony.
"Are you interested in participating in the design of the opening ceremony of the Beijing Winter Olympics?" In April 2021, Cao Yuxi's team room received an invitation from Wang Zhiou, visual effects supervisor of the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympic Games. Without much thought, Cao Yuxi agreed.
The artist studio hosted by Cao Yuxi was only established in 2020, and the members were only 8 people. This time, together with other teams, they participated in all the creative aspects of the early stages of the production. The difficulty of the project and the complexity of the process were something that Cao Yuxi's team had not expected at the beginning.
"Before I wanted to make a flower, I could do it casually, all of our other projects, its audience is relatively small, but the Winter Olympics is for the world to see, have to spend time to grind, the director also has to think, have a good creative angle." 」
"The idea of the initial snowflake presentation is relatively simple, a simple phalanx, two hearts converging, and then a simple blue sky and white clouds, neither particularly beautiful nor romantic, fortunately, the director and we have not given up." Cao Yuxi said.
Before the finalized version of snowflakes, Cao Yuxi's team also tried flat and three-dimensional snowflake experiments. Whether it is a magnificent and exquisite hand-painted snowflake, a small and cute vector snowflake with strong graphics, or a three-dimensional and vivid three-dimensional snowflake that is as brilliant as a jewel, it has been trapped in the design dilemma of not being able to highlight the naked eye 3D. The overly flat plan was repeatedly rejected by director Zhang Yimou, and he was once trapped in a dilemma.
After carefully analyzing the ice surface material and glacier renderings in real life, Cao Yuxi's team greatly improved the existing snowflakes, retained the simple and atmospheric shape, highlighted the crystal clear texture, combined with the paper-cutting elements of Fu Cube, and arranged a group of meandering snowflakes on the ice surface .
The endless snowflakes are connected into a beautiful and moving curve, combined with the luminous characteristics of the LED and the naked-eye 3D effect under a fixed perspective, under the "ice surface" is a layer of frozen snowflakes growing downwards, truly realizing the visual effect of the realistic glacier snow cave.
"From the original blue sky and white cloud version to the final version presented to the world, we changed 15 versions, and it took half a year to finalize. The display of snowflakes is also the part that I appreciate the most. Cao Yuxi said, "The opening ceremony of the final draft of our overall design plan was decided about a month ago, but our minor changes continued until the day before the opening ceremony, and my final version was submitted on February 1st, which was very exciting." ”
For the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics, Cao Yuxi's team began in early November and could only take one day off for two weeks. Many people stayed up late to go back, and before the opening ceremony, all the staff were preparing in the studio, giving up the opportunity to reunite with their families. Cao Yuxi said, "When hundreds of millions of viewers around the world are staring at the 'snowflakes', we will feel the heavy power of the body, and we are very happy and excited." ”