The painting style of "Summer Worm Country" is very unique.
An animated film "The Return of the Great Sage" allows the Chinese people to see the miracle of Chinese-style animation at the box office. In fact, there are many more young people who silently create miracles that are not known.
Tang Baihua, a post-80s artist who graduated from the Printmaking Department of the China Academy of Art, is one of them.
In the era of pursuing internationalization, high technology and extreme speed, they do their works in the most unscientific way and at a snail's speed. With more than 20 young people and 10,000 pieces of plasterboard, he made a 17-minute animation "Summer Worm Country", with a total weight of 20 tons, which is the heaviest animation in the world.
This animation has recently caught fire in the circle of friends, and many people have been weeping by the beauty of this Tang Dynasty painting style.
The story of the Summer Worm Kingdom
A quote from Zhuangzi
Born in 1986 in Liuyang, Hunan Province, Tang Baihua graduated from the China Academy of Art in 2009. In 2013, he completed the work "Summer Worm Country".
The story of Summer Worm Country slowly begins with a black-and-white prologue in which a warrior pulls a bow and shoots a big fish. In the thick drum beat, an ancient legend carved on the stone tablet unfolded - the warriors, the big fish, and the sea water were all solidly "carved" on the plasterboard, and then rubbed and scanned with paper. This ancient stone extension usually only appears on the stele.
In the vast South China Sea, the appearance of the "Summer Worm Country" has a strong Dunhuang flavor: the smoke rises, the attics of red beams and green tiles are gradually spread out in the ancient background tone, and the generals wearing armor and the white horses with strong physique appear to be slow to move because of the heavy painting style.
The background color is natural earth yellow – not so much earth yellow as earth wall color. On the earthen wall, there are also faint potholes of physical texture, which are the pores on the surface of the gypsum board.
There is no dialogue, only folk drum music and local opera as background music, creating a sense of religious mystery and solemnity. The Chinese and English subtitles whose plot is written by a brush hint: the citizens of the summer worm country only have three quarters of life, spring life and autumn death. Their history books record that ice is the most precious thing in the world, but no one has ever seen it. The general, Lux, and Mr. Modou were three people, so they embarked on an ice hunting trip.
This story is based on "Zhuangzi Qiushui" - the well frog can not speak to the sea, confined to the void; the summer worm can not speak to the ice, but to the time.
The first time I read this sentence, Tang Baihua was still in middle school. These words reminded him of his experience as a child in the liuyang temple in his hometown. Liuyang is a well-known fireworks production base. Making firecrackers is a dangerous profession, so the locals built many temples for peace.
For Tang Baihua, those temples are art galleries with countless sculptures, murals, and living worship rituals.
The murals and the stories they tell, in Tang Baihua's mind, gradually formed an unreal world. But the world often terrifies him: Where is this out-of-reach place? How big is it?
When he heard the story of the summer worms, Tang Baihua suddenly found a certain resonance, feeling that those summer worms were like himself, "full of confusion about the vast world and life." ”
It took a few days to draw a template
Slower is not the same
In 2009, Tang Baihua graduated from the Printmaking Department of the China Academy of Art. In 2011, he and a few friends co-founded a cultural company and decided to interpret Xia Worm, who was equally confused with him, into the company's "signature work". As a result, "Summer Worm Country" became the only work in this profit-oriented enterprise that was not for profit-oriented.
All ten people in the company participated in the creation, first rushing to Dunhuang and collecting wind for half a month. Later, he studied the murals in Yongle Palace in Shanxi, and traveled to many places to see the grottoes and see the architecture.
"You have to go out, you can't find traditional culture in Beijing," Tang Baihua sighed, "Beijing is too new." ”
At the same time, he was also pondering the materials for painting.
Tang Baihua, who majored in printmaking, tried wood boards, stone slabs, watermarks, copper plates, and also tried all kinds of handmade paper and silk, and the results were either too hard or too soft - too hard to make too difficult, too soft without the texture of the mural. Only plaster, easy to take materials, low cost, painting effect is close to the wall.
The plasterboard required for the picture varies in size, and Tang Baihua and his colleagues bought gypsum powder and processed it on their own needs. Painting tools are brushes and traditional mineral pigments. After drawing the template on the plasterboard, use the scanner to scan it into the computer.
Drawing a template is a slow job, and it takes a few days to draw a good piece. The plaster is fragile, and if the template is broken, it is too hurtful to redraw, so it is simply glued up and restored, so that cracks will appear when swept into the computer. Tang Baihua thinks this is also good, "just retains the feeling of handmade." ”
When editing, the templates are strung together like beads in sequence. During the two-year production period, the editing took only a week, and the rest of the time was spent drawing templates. This kind of workshop-style "slowness" is something that Tang Baihua particularly values. Like Miyazaki, who he likes, he has always painted by hand.
"I'd rather be slower and do something different." Tang Baihua said.
Tang Baihua likes "The Great Haunting of the Heavenly Palace". The Shanghai Fine Arts Studio positioned the film as an "art film", and Tang Baihua called "Summer Worm Country" a "painting film short", but "Big Trouble In Heavenly Palace" can go to the theater line, and "Summer Worm Country" is difficult.
"It's not like the Minions, which are borderless, young and old. We do traditional painting, first driving away half of the audience; using plaster, driving away half; without 3D, and then halfway; telling a philosophical story, we have to go halfway. Tang Baihua said.
Last year, the "20-ton" cartoon, along with some of its manuscripts, the bulky plasterboard, was exhibited at the Fengmian Art Space in Guangzhou. It's also one of the few public appearances of the cartoon since it was produced in late 2013 — too niche for commercial institutions to show it.
However, we still have the opportunity to see these beautiful "painting short films" on the big screen.
Because it was shortlisted for the 60th Oberhausen International Short Film Festival, the 24th Zagreb International Animated Film Festival, the 68th Edinburgh International Film Festival, the 7th Polish International Animation Film Festival, the 25th São Paulo International Short Film Festival, etc., it shocked people at a series of art festivals.