“Did you hear that”
“There’s a roar inside me”
“It seems to say”
“Stop being a coward”
“Be a lion”
In June
Luckily it was selected by Festival International du Film d'Animation d'Annecy
Which is known as Oscar for animations
As one of the seeds in the main competition
It’s realistic
It tells the growth of three teenagers
The three heroes are left behind by their parents
A Juan
A Mao and A Gou
They participate in the lion dance contest
Under the guidance of Xianyu Qiang, a former lion dance champion
A Juan is an honest child
He gets good grades in school, and he behaves
A Mao is kinda like a hooligan
A Gou is quite silly
They actually have the same background
They were born in a small and remote area
Their parents went outside to work
They are always looked down upon and bullied
But they in fact have their own dreams
They don’t want to be a sickly feline
Xianyu Qiang is already a middle-aged man
He doesn’t do lion dance anymore
He supports himself by doing a different job
But he still loves lion dance
He takes the three teenagers to join a contest
Held in a really far-away place
It’s seemingly impossible to realize
They want to make a nice twist
This is a straightforward description
“Don’t give up easily”
“Because others bully you”
“One day my ship will sail through wind and ocean's roar to reach the destination”
“I want to be a lion too”
We joked that the animation has no attraction
There’s no stars or internet celebrities in it and it’s not an IP
The first key word is “realism”
The second is “originality”
The third is “youth”
The fourth is “lion dance”
It’s based on traditional Chinese culture
Which is in our DNA or blood
For an animation, if it’s totally unrealistic
Then I think it’s not complete
Some disapprove the faces of the main characters
Because they don’t look good
Get rid of the filters and think about what you really are
You’ll know our measure is quite accurate
The whole process took around two years to finish
Which is quite fast for an animation
The hairs of the lion were made one by one
You need to make them very real
The eyes blinks, the ears move, and the mouth moves
So many details
The workload is beyond imagination
Most of our team members are Cantonese
I saw lion dance much more after I came to Guangdong
Lion dance is commonly seen in the opening ceremonies of new supermarkets and shops
If you want to make a realistic film
You must base it on facts
The lion dance club that we found is awesome
It has received multiple international awards and it’s named Huang Feihong Lion Dance Club
We shot a large amount of materials
There’re lots of rules in lion dance
Foshan-style lion heads, traditional lion heads and Heshan-style Lion Heads
What the animation’s hero A Juan takes in his hands
Is a new Foshan-style lion head
Its cheek has been simplified
To become a ball
It uses wool
Which is very fluffy
We have also visited some villages
Mainly Cantonese villages
Such as Baizhang Village and Beishui Village of Shunde
They’re full of life
They have old ponds
Plots of houses
Like draughts on a checkerboard
We took bags and tweezers
To collect plants in the villages
And then took pictures of them
We observed the views there
I wish to show four seasons in Guangdong
We’re all ordinary people
And the tall piles represent mountains
The lion dances on the piles to reach the prize
The process is much like our life
A Mao and A Gou
The names are designed to represent ordinary people
They try to cross over a high mountain
Which is deemed unreachable
Don’t give up in any circumstance
Just follow your own route
“As long as we can hear drums inside us”
“We’re lions”