"Welcome pine" when coming, "folding willow farewell" when sending, fiery red Chinese knot woven by AR technology, laser-engraved ice and snow five rings... The beautiful moments that bloomed at the opening and closing ceremonies of the Beijing Winter Olympics showed the world China's top stage technology and artistic aesthetic power, and also pushed a group of young art teams to the front of the stage. Among them, a team of young entrepreneurs from Shanghai, Nuclear Octopus Studio, participated in the whole process of the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympic Games. The creativity and production of the two links of "Ice and Snow Five Rings" and "Building a Snowflake" that they are responsible for have left a deep and unforgettable impression.
"This is the most challenging large-scale activity project I have encountered in the past 19 years of my career," Huang Chen, head of "Nuclear Octopus" and director of young visual effects, told reporters, saying that in 2021, the entire team was almost stationed in Beijing until February 9. In the face of the test of "tight time, heavy task, and high pressure", the team has crossed one technical obstacle after another and continued to strive for excellence to climb to the peak of art.
Founded in 2017, "Nuclear Octopus" is a creative team of transmedia arts. Among the core members of the team, in addition to Huang Chen graduated from the Stage Art Department of the Shanghai Theater Academy, another partner, Song Yuefeng, is from the China Academy of Art, and among the team members are screenwriters and animation producers from the Department of Architecture. In 2019, "Nuclear Octopus" developed the "Traditional Watercolor Ink Animation Production Platform Based on CG Technology", which replaces the traditional hand-drawn method with CG technology to achieve China's unique watercolor ink animation production capabilities, which was able to shine at the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics.
24 lasers shoot at the ice cube, like a paintbrush carving history on the huge ice cube, from the previous Winter Olympics to the Beijing Winter Olympics, the light and shadow change as if time and space travel... At the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympic Games, the "Ice and Snow Five Rings" session left a deep impression on the audience with its dazzling imagination, and the stage high-tech combination of lasers, digital special effects, physical mechanical devices and animated images was vividly displayed, especially the "Chinese style" ink animation, which was amazing.
This link was done in cooperation with the "Nuclear Octopus" and the visual effects company "Black Bow". The difficulty is to convert the three-dimensional animation into the point data required by the laser machine and achieve rapid effect iteration.
"Digital calligraphy hand-drawn animation is very rare in the industry, and it can be said that this time is the world's first." Huang Chen said. The original design of the 2D ink animation of "Ice and Snow Five Rings" is to add a sense of modernity on the basis of presenting Chinese charm. This is director Zhang Yimou's concept throughout - not to stick to the traditional Chinese style of communication, but to show the cultural self-confidence of the temperament of a big country in innovation.
Under the guidance of the director, the team explored the concept of painting human figures with the concept of calligraphy, omitting the details in the joints of the human body, combining with the starting, line and closing strokes in the calligraphy, and specially selected the dry brush stroke method in the pen, so that the 23 moving humanoids were made into a flying white effect, and the movement dynamics and the free national temperament were integrated. In the end, the director's "magical paper man" jumped on the ice.
"1 minute and 35 seconds of animation, it took half an animated film time," the first live rehearsal, the effect was not satisfactory, for this reason, Huang Chen and his partners drew at least 17 versions of the original animation in different detail styles, working more than 16 hours a day. "According to the calculation of one piece of paper per frame, the number of scraps reaches hundreds of thousands."
In August 2021, the "nuclear octopus" received the design task of "Building a Snowflake" and was fully responsible. This link takes "community of human destiny, world unity" as the core concept, and dancers holding guide signs from various countries will gather in this link. The large snowflakes, symbolizing the community of human destiny, soared across the sky and finally flew back to the center of the ground and slowly rose under the eyes of all. In more than five minutes, the design team needs to complete multiple scenes and content changes, and cooperate with multiple links such as actor positioning, props use, and music rhythm to achieve a seamless and beautiful effect of virtual and real.
According to reports, the ground screen of the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympic Games is 155 meters long, 75.5 meters wide, and the total area is 11,626 square meters. The icefall area is 57 meters high, 20 meters wide, and the total resolution exceeds 16K, an application scale that is unprecedented. "The extra large screen is an incomparably test of precision and process design," Huang Chen told reporters, adding that the team needed to check frame by frame to ensure the correctness of the picture and the unity of color to achieve the best visual effects. ”
"We are extremely proud to be able to participate in the creation of the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics," said Huang Chen, whose creative vision and stage concept of director Zhang Yimou and director Sha Xiaolan gave the team great inspiration. "The whole design and preparation process ignited the Olympic spirit in our hearts and also ignited our creative passion."
Photo credit: Xinhua News Agency, Nuclear Octopus Studio
Author: Tong Weijing
Editor: Wang Xiaoli
Editor-in-Charge: Liu Qing
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