A piece of "Winter Olympic snowflakes" painted for three years Chinese-style romance is not easy to come by

Stunning "snowflakes" at the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics

At present, the hot-selling ice piers are "nowhere to grab", and recently someone has grabbed the Winter Olympic snowflakes. Speaking of winter Olympic snowflakes, many people must be most impressed by the one at the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics. 96 "small snowflakes" form a "big snowflake", and the olive branch is surrounded by a "silver ribbon", and the non-uniform two-way concentric rotation between the "big snowflake" and the "silver ribbon" is not uniform. In the interview, designer Li Min told the Yangtze Evening News/Purple Cow News reporter that this "snowflake" has been repeatedly revised for nearly three years and more than 300 drafts before it was amazingly presented to the world.

Yangtze Evening News/Purple Cow News reporter Zhang Nan

How was the Chinese knot shape "big snowflake" born?

At the opening ceremony of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics, the Olympic flame was lit in the center of the main torch "Big Snowflake". Subsequently, the torch platform located in the National Stadium (Olympic Central Area), beijing Yanqing Division, Hebei Zhangjiakou Division was lit in turn, and will continue to burn until the end of the Winter Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, and will become a permanent sculpture of the three places, in the future the public can go to punch cards.

Do you know the story behind "Big Snowflake"? In 2019, under the recommendation of the teachers of the School of Fine Arts of Tsinghua University, Li Min, who graduated from the School of Fine Arts of Tsinghua University, entered the design team of the director of the Winter Olympics. "At that time, I said that I would help realize the director's creativity through design, so I promised to try it, and later I learned that it was the art design work for the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics."

Li Min said that according to the director's requirements, each person designed snowflakes from 24 countries, a total of 100 countries were designed, and at the beginning a hundred snowflakes that were completely different were designed, representing different countries. At the beginning, everyone let go of the creation, and the design elements considered landmark architectural patterns of various countries and traditional Chinese auspicious patterns, such as Chinese knots, cranes, peony flowers, plum blossoms, bauhinia flowers, lotus flowers, koi, swallows, Chinese architectural roofs, Chinese bridges, etc. "Collecting information in the early stage, collecting a lot of information and pictures related to snowflakes, for me is not a reference, to create a unique snowflake shape, you must first understand, and then jump out of these designs."

After repeated revisions and arguments, the final draft adopts the shape of "Chinese knot". After reunification, everyone will take the lead in improving the China knot plan at hand. In the end, Li Min's plan was selected by the director as one of the alternatives, and the later stage still faced several months of revision, and finally formed a version that condensed everyone's wisdom, and the black bow team did the visual effect design and detail adjustment.

Li Min revealed that the design also underwent a relatively large deletion. The beauty of chinese patterns requires a certain density to be well reflected, but from the perspective of the lighting effect, the lines are too complicated, resulting in the inability to see the snowflake theme modeling creativity. "The director asked us to overturn the plan and make drastic cuts, cutting out more than half of the lines. In the process of subtraction, it was also found that the shape pattern of the Chinese knot can not only maintain the sense of beauty, but also represent a good cultural connotation and meaning. ”

Pursue the ultimate visual effect

"Director Zhang Yimou's control of aesthetics and details is extreme, and his requirements for us are particularly strict, so every time I go to the studio before a meeting, I will be mentally prepared to redesign the plan." The director will have new ideas every time he meets, will constantly subvert the ideas that he thinks are not good enough, and pursue the ultimate visual effects, and his extraordinary imagination and profound artistic skills make it difficult for you to say no to his revision opinions. "What impressed Li Min was that the director was really energetic, sleeping for three hours a day, and most of the time was busy for the opening ceremony." The contact with the director in recent years has made me really feel that the degree of his concentration and love for his career is really difficult for ordinary people to achieve. ”

Applying Chinese line drawing to modern illustration, the beauty of the lines in Li Min's illustrations impressed director Zhang Yimou. "Even this opening ceremony is also a style that has a little modern sense and combines with Chinese tradition, and I hope we can provide some good ideas." After completing the design work for the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympic Games, Li Min threw himself into the illustration of the theme of the Winter Olympics.

Source: Yangtze Evening News