Taiwan films shine at global CG animation festival

2015/07/30

Two Taiwan animated shorts were selected for worldwide screening during U.S.-based SIGGRAPH Computer Animation Festival Aug. 9-13 at Los Angeles Convention Center in California.

“J’ai Vu, Une Fois, Une Magnifique Image” by Steven Hsiao and “First Launch” by Wang Wei-xiu of Taipei City-based Bigcat Studio are among 100 animations featuring at the annual event recognizing outstanding achievements in animated feature and short films, real-time graphics, scientific visualization and visual effects.

Hsiao, a graduate from National Taiwan University of Science and Technology’s College of Design, said the honor is a real boost for him as a CG artist. The two-minute film is a no-gimmicks reflection on the struggle for life from the perspective of Rhacophorus moltrechti, a tree frog endemic to Taiwan, he added.

According to Hsiao, unlike most cartoons featuring anthropomorphic animal characters, it is pure survival instinct presented with no value judgments.

“For the tree frog out on a hunt, it is either eat or be eaten in the wild,” he said. “Taken from Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s novella ‘The Little Prince,’ the title suggests that life or death depends on where you are in the natural order of the food chain.”

The short was also selected in March for international student film competition at the Holland Animation Film Festival in the Netherlands. This is the second CAF nod for Hsiao, with “Love Child,” a singular take on the issue of abortion, earning selection in 2009.

Equally impressive is Wang’s “First Launch,” a Ministry of Culture-sponsored 3-D piece telling the story of a 4 1/2-year-old girl’s first day of preschool.

In the National Taiwan University of Arts graduate’s offering, the girl imagines she is in outer space fighting aliens. At 7:30 in the morning when the preschool bus arrives, she sets off on a journey in her mind’s eye shaped by fantasy and reality.

CAF is organized by New York-based Association for Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques. It is also a qualifying event recognized by U.S. Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Source: Taiwan Today (http://taiwantoday.tw/ct.asp?xItem=233135&ctNode=413)