Producer Lu Xi
Director Evonne.
The ethereal Jinxia Cave House, the magnificent Huashan Wonderland, and the dazzling light of the mysterious birds … … On August 19th, "The List of New Gods: Yang Jian" was released, and the amazing visual effects won praise. Under the new overhead background, the movie’s setting of the fairyland subverted the public imagination. Yang Jian, Aquilaria Resinatum, Shen Gongbao, Four Heavenly Kings and many other cool gods appeared one after another. As an antique fantasy visual effect blockbuster, every extraordinary imagination in the movie seems to see Guo Man’s figure struggling to leap forward.
How does the second part of the New God List series break the facial makeup of Erlang God Yang Jian? How do the stories of Yang Jian and Aquilaria blend together? How is the "rare" Taiji diagram of three-dimensional rendering ink painting made in the film? Listen to what the creators of "New God List: Yang Jian" say.
Choose Yang Jian because he is a familiar stranger.
Lu Xi, the producer of "New God List: Yang Jian", introduced that the development and creation of the film started in early 2019, and the story was confirmed in the second half of 2019, and it began to enter the early art exploration and further story polishing. In 2020, the development of three-dimensional character LookDev was launched, and the construction of digital assets, the exploration of role performance, the design of lens language, and the early stage of dynamic capture testing were gradually promoted, and the development of synchronous music was also being promoted. Mid-production reached its peak in 2021, and simultaneous production was also started at the end of the year. In June 2022, the whole film was produced.
Regarding why Yang Jian’s story was chosen in the second part of the "New God List" series, Lu Xi said that although the public knew Yang Jian, they didn’t have such a detailed understanding of his story. "We have both a sense of acquaintance and freshness, so we chose Yang Jian as the protagonist."
Evonne, the director, also said that Yang Jian is widely recognized, but he rarely elaborates his film and television works, and Yang Jian is a supporting role or villain in many works, even a little facelift. Therefore, if the New God List series tells the story of Yang Jian, there will be more possibilities to explore. Evonne said: "The charm of the film lies in the fact that different people can have different interpretations, and the story itself is very rich in dimensions."
"The List of New Gods: Yang Jian" interprets the classic myth of "saving the mother by splitting the mountain" from a new perspective, and tells the story that after Yang Jian, who was down and out because of the damage of his eye, met his nephew Chen Xiang, who was eager to save the mother, his uncles and nephews went on a thrilling fantasy adventure together.
In "Lotus Lantern", the story of agarwood chopping a mountain to save her mother is a household name. To the surprise of director Evonne, when collecting materials, he found that Yang Jian also had a story of chopping a mountain to save her mother. "I didn’t know this story before I made this film. After discovering this point, I think he is also begging for his mother, so why stop his nephew from doing it to save his mother? It doesn’t make sense, so I hope I can tell it again from a new perspective and integrate the two stories of saving my mother by splitting the mountain. Aquilaria went to Lushan to save her mother because of her thoughts about her mother. Yang Jian also experienced the same thing. The emotional core of this film is to go through fire and water for her loved ones. "
In Evonne’s view, Yang Jian is an introverted person, and he doesn’t want his true feelings to be perceived by others. In fact, Yang Jian is an emotional person, and his heart is very soft. "In the film, Yang Jian’s expression of affection is restrained, but it can be seen that Yang Jian knows that Aquilaria has been separated from his mother since childhood. Because he has similar experiences, he understands Aquilaria very well, and at the same time feels embarrassed about the lack of companionship of relatives in the growth of Aquilaria, so he cares for Aquilaria all the way. He has been helping Aquilaria and accompanying Aquilaria as an aunt."
Standing 1.9 meters tall, the former God of War became a handsome boy.
Yang Jian is a handsome character in traditional mythology, and his fighting power is also top-notch, and he has distinctive features, such as three eyes and a roaring dog around him. Evonne said that this gave them plenty of creative space, but in "The List of New Gods: Yang Jian", the former god of war was damaged by the eye of a lotus lantern twelve years ago. Evonne said that Yang Jian’s eye in the sky is a visual feature that the audience is most familiar with. "Yang Jian with eyes in the sky is a very powerful fairy, so in fact, in the early stage of creation, we thought that if his most powerful feature was removed, what kind of state would this character enter?" Lu Xi also said: "We want to be a Yang Jian with a different image from the past. If you are blind, the state that Yuan Shen can’t summon is very different from his original image."
Therefore, different from the image of Yang Jian in previous film and television works, Yang Jian in "The List of New Gods: Yang Jian" has a high face value, but he has become a "down-and-out handsome guy" because of hurting his eyes.
Cui Yuemei, the director of character design for "The New God List: Yang Jian", designed about 180 characters for this film. "Compared with previous works, the workload in character design is about 10% more." Among them, Yang Jian’s version of character image design is the most. "One of the difficulties in Yang Jian’s design is that we have to design many different states, such as his daily state, the state after awakening, the state of reopening the third eye, and the state of war damage. Another difficulty is that Yang Jian needs to be physically fit from childhood to youth and then to adulthood. We need to let everyone know that this is Yang Jian Jr., and he is a person with adult Yang Jian, so there will be some difficulties. The design time of the role of Yang Jian is about half a year. Because it is the first protagonist, we spend more energy and time. We will do a lot of exploration: including the collection of reference materials and some attempts in drawing. "
Cui Yuemei said that they designed Yang Jian’s height to be 1.9 meters. "We designed Yang Jian to be tall and handsome, and the whole proportion is slender and tall."
Because Yang Jian is positioned as a lonely fairy, although he is in a state of wandering clouds and wild cranes, he used to be very beautiful, so the texture of his clothes is quite particular. "The texture of the white robe is expensive silk, and the skirt of his outer robe has not been buttoned up, because Yang Jian’s personality is easy-going and chic, so we don’t think he will wear this kind of personality particularly formally, so we made the clothes a little bit open to make him look more relaxed and lazy as a whole."
Designers also designed some moire patterns on Yang Jian’s clothes, because: "Yang Jian came from Jinxiadong, which is a fairyland, with a lot of clouds and fog. Our moire patterns have some echoes with his origin, and the moire patterns have an unruly feeling, which accords with Yang Jian’s personality. At the same time, moire patterns are also a typical pattern in Wei and Jin Dynasties. Yang Jian’s robe and headscarf used tie-dye elements, because this film mainly refers to the style of Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, which was a popular element at that time, and the tie-dye culture was more in line with Yang Jian’s laid-back personality. "
Yang Jian’s armor also refers to the armor of Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, but Cui Yuemei said that because Yang Jian was a mythical character after all, they took the armor of Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties as the basis, plus some celestial elements they designed, and integrated them.
Yang Jian was a handsome boy when he was wearing armor. He was very sunny, young and warm-blooded. Later, because Yang Jian experienced a lot of things, his expression was relatively indifferent. "We added some stubble to his face and made the skin texture a little rough, which made people feel that he had experienced something and his mental outlook was different."
For Yang Jian’s Eye of the Sky, the design team has tried more than a dozen schemes. "For example, how big his eye is, how big his pupils are, and whether there are patterns and special effects. Later, after various attempts, we determined the current version, which is more in line with the setting of Yang Jian in the film."
The most difficult scene is Jinxiadong, and the most complicated scene is Penglai.
Compared with Yang Jian’s "magic face", the "face value" of the fairyland in the film is not too high, and the visual styles of Penglai, Fanghu and Yingzhou have their own characteristics, which brings the audience the shocking feeling of "where to find the fairy tales, between heaven and earth".
Penglai Fairyland is like a three-dimensional city, with all kinds of spectacular buildings and spaceships shuttling through it, which is spectacular. The Qionglou Yuyu on Fanghu Xiandao is brightly lit, just like a bustling city that never sleeps. Yingzhou Xiandao is inspired by Dunhuang Crescent Spring, and the towering pavilions in the desert oasis have great visual impact. In addition, the legendary Yuquan Mountain, where Yang Jian’s master is located, is also exposed for the first time. It takes Taihu Stone as the core element, and the peaks are left behind and independent of the clouds, and the artistic conception is ethereal. The artistic styles of the three fairy islands are based on the Qin and Han Dynasties, and combine the characteristics of some northern and southern dynasties. After many animation production steps, such as modeling and rendering, the ethereal fairyland was "born", the details were full, and the ancient fantasy came to my face.
Evonne said that one of the main reasons why this film particularly attracted him was the "fairy world". "What is the life of the immortals? The description of fairyland in classic animation works is basically a Chinese-style palace, where immortals are walking in clouds. We broke this thing from the beginning this time. For example, in this film, it was directly set that immortals could not fly in the sky after the last World War, and everyone could only sit ‘ Spacecraft ’ We also hope to expand everyone’s imagination about the fairy world in this way. "
Gui Ye, the artistic director, said, "The artistic design of the film has been prepared for about a year. Besides going to Dunhuang and Shaanxi History Museum, I also found a lot of materials. The artistic style refers to the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, because there are few pictures, so I can only take materials from some cultural relics and literal materials, and then transform them into pictures and integrate them into the film. The overall artistic style of the film refers to the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, whether it is role costumes or props (such as celadon lacquerware), and the architectural style refers to the styles of Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties and Han Dynasty. "
Talking about the design inspiration of Penglai, Fanghu and Yingzhou, Mr. Gui said that because these three fairy islands are all in myths and legends, there are few related written materials. "So we played on the basis of the original text and drew inspiration from some ancient buildings in China to design. The most important thing is to serve the plot."
Master Gui revealed that the most difficult scene is Jinxiadong, and it is difficult to create an ethereal and quiet atmosphere in Jinxiadong. Penglai is the most tedious and time-consuming. "Jinxia Cave is more difficult, and it is the feeling of the traditional fairy mountain in China. It is surrounded by clouds, pines and cypresses, and there is a cloud-like waterfall. When creating, it uses three-dimensional technology to restore the two-dimensional cloud sense, mainly pursuing the fairy spirit and charm."
How to integrate scientific and technological elements into ancient scenery? Master Gui said that the part of the film that embodies science and technology is mainly mixed energy, which is equivalent to electricity and gas in reality. "When I looked up the information, I found that the technology in the Eastern Han Dynasty was very developed, such as bronze gears, so I combined the human and animal forces at that time with the story background design of the overhead gods in the film, and I got mixed energy."
Because the immortals can’t walk in the sky, there are all kinds of spaceships in the film, including Yang Jian’s boat, gourd fairy’s boat, four heavenly kings’ boat, government boats, freight boats and private boats of ordinary people. Master Gui revealed that Yang Jian’s boat mainly pursued speed, and was inspired by the military speedboat of the Han Dynasty. It was a very common and highly mobile assault clipper at that time. The small gourd fairy sold private medicine, and his boat was a scarab. In classical medical books, the scarab was blindly Chinese medicine.
The biggest challenge is that it takes at least one month for one shot of a character in the flying dance.
Three-dimensional rendered ink painting, as the most iconic visual effect in light-chasing works, has been shown differently in White Snake: The Origin and New Gods: Nezha Reborn’s White Snake 2: The Green Snake Robbery, and each work is constantly breaking through. This time, the Tai Chi map battle in New God List: Yang Jian, the ink texture is even more amazing to the audience.
Producer Lu Xi introduced that the design and concept stage of Taiji diagram is the most difficult. "Because it is recorded in ancient books, it is only said that it is a super powerful magic weapon. In the film, the setting of Taiji diagram is not a specific scene, but an illusory space, in which it will hook up the demons of all the people who enter and drive people into a dreamland space; The design team has been grinding back and forth for more than half a year, and there are many completely different schemes. In order to highlight the oriental texture in CG shots, we abandoned several concepts with stronger three-dimensional structure, but adopted ink painting and two-dimensional style presentation. From design to final production, it took more than one year of production time. "
It is a great challenge to present the ink effect by means of three-dimensional CG. Director Evonne revealed that team research and testing took nearly a year. "The difficulty lies in how to transition from the three-dimensional scene to the two-dimensional ink style of Taiji diagram. The plane paper and a three-dimensional bridge can’t be connected, so we made a big curl action on the three-dimensional bridge. In Taiji ink painting, there is another layer with the same texture as rice paper. Our approach is to add a layer of this kind of rice paper to the environmental layer, such as the ground stone, so that we can feel the texture of traditional ink painting from different angles. " Master Gui also said that the reason why the artistic style of Taiji diagram uses traditional ink painting sense is to pursue the sense of flow to qi.
In addition to the Tai Chi Fighter, the flying dance of Luo Shenfu in the film is also highly praised by the audience: Yue Xian Square in Yingzhou, above the pavilion in Sendai, petals are flying, fairies are dancing in veils and jade beads are shaking. The flying beauty of "If you are amazed, just like Youlong", combined with the beautiful emotional singing of singer Rachel, has a stunning effect. The audience spoke highly of the play: "The beauty of Dunhuang frescoes flew out of the wall", "Flying Dance, Luoshen Fu, Dunhuang frescoes and other scenes interpreted the beauty of China traditional culture to the extreme".
Evonne, the director, revealed that there was no such scene at first, but when collecting folk songs in Dunhuang, walking into the Mogao Grottoes was like entering another world. "I felt the imagination of ancient artists, so I was inspired. There were dances, music and musical instruments for the court banquet of ancient immortals. I decided to add this scene. Moreover, Wan Luo’s identity is set as a dancer. This poem "Luo Shen Fu" in the film is extracted from Cao Zhi’s "Luo Shen Fu", which expresses infinite sadness and disappointment, corresponding to Wan Luo’s thoughts about important people in the film. "
The scene of flying dance was completed in the air. Evonne said that the technical difficulty of this scene lies in the dance itself. "We need to present the dance in a weightless state. We found a professional dancer to perform the Dunhuang dance, and let the dance team choreograph on the ground first, and present it in a three-dimensional space with moving capture technology, adding 360-degree spatial changes and camera movements, and then adjusting the movements and trying again; The dance teacher refers to the three-dimensional animation to adjust the movements, and we also spend a lot of energy communicating with the animators about the position and arrangement of the dance, and repeatedly modifying the running-in; Dancers don’t have weightless streamers when they jump, so they need to add streamers when they make them. They should consider how to match the role and conform to the scientific physical state. There is a ring that needs to deal with the streamers and hair of the characters, which is the most challenging part of the whole film. It takes at least one month for a character in a shot, which is 20-30 times the workload of ordinary shots. "
The new dimension of the country, the audience and the market need to be slowly "cultivated"
Although New Gods: Nezha Reborn, the first part of the New God List series, is based on The Romance of the Gods, it gives a new interpretation and interpretation of Nezha’s spiritual core from a cooler and younger perspective. It has opened a brand-new dimension of imagination for Guo Man, and made bold innovations in characterization, world outlook establishment and visual style.
The same is true of the second film "The New God List: Yang Jian". Evonne believes that the biggest connection between the two films is that they are under the same world view system. In addition, both films have discussions on breaking fate. "But Li Yunxiang in New Gods: Nezha Reborn is hard and Yang Jian is more leisurely."
The New List of Gods: Yang Jian has built an unprecedented mythical world, and Evonne thinks that the charm of animation lies in maximizing the imaginary world. In his view, there is no contradiction between tradition and innovation. The blood of China’s traditional culture has already melted into the bones of every Chinese, while innovation means telling stories with the voice of young people, creating stories with the latest technology and interpreting stories with modern ideas. Telling the old story of China from a younger perspective, giving new life to the tradition.
On February 21st, 2021, when the film New Gods: Nezha Reborn was released, Zhao Ji, the director of the film, posted a long microblog, referring to an important colleague of the team of "The New God List: Yang Jian" who wrote a resignation email on the first day of his return from the Spring Festival holiday. "He is very important to Yang Jian. Before the Chinese New Year, he told me that he wanted to try another industry. I told him, let’s wait, Nezha sells well, and we can stick to it. Dreams can wait, but life can’t. Living with a dream may last for a year, two years and three years, but after all, I have no reason to persuade him to stay. "
The animation industry in China needs the persistence of animators, and Lu Yi also believes that the audience and market of animated films need to be "cultivated" slowly. "Animated films are a very special artistic expression, which will show the culture intensively, and at the same time, animated films also have a relatively fixed audience. On the one hand, the creators are constantly putting their own ideas and expressions; On the other hand, after the animated film is released, the audience’s feedback will also feed back the creation. I think the audience and the creators are jointly exploring a unique animation art expression form in Chinese. "
It is reported that the total amount of "New God List: Yang Jian" is 20% more than that of "White Snake 2: The Green Snake Robbed". The progress of Guoman in recent years is obvious to all. In Evonne’s view, the imagination of animated films is very large, and many things that are difficult to achieve in real movies can be created in an unconstrained way. He said that when he was growing up, he rarely saw domestic animated films in cinemas, so his ideal for entering this industry was "the direction of our efforts is to hope that the next generation can watch domestic animated films grow up".
Text/Reporter Zhang Jia for the picture/small table
Liu Ye
