- 497
Baozha!
Animation
/ CG
The story idea came from a thought: What if everyone had a guardian angel, but someone got one who was terrible at her job?
We explored various possibilities of Baozha being a smoker, a palace maid and even considered a boy guardian who was a pervert. I realised that Baozha lacked any depth to her character, and I tasked everyone with asking questions involving the characters, their strengths and weaknesses, relationships with other characters, and the world they inhabit. Jolene informed us of her experiences with her young cousins and her grandmother, which helped immensely in finding more truthful characteristics in our characters. This quickly led to connections being made with experiences we can connect to, such as drawing inspiration from Journey to the West, Chinese folk religion and games.
We modelled Baozha after Nezha (哪吒) and Goddess after Guan Yin, the Goddess of Mercy in Buddhism. The game characters used in the final film were modelled after the cast in Journey to the West. We chose to model our character after Nezha, a protection deity often depicted as a young child, especially so in popular media, as it gave us a both a path to explore the idea of a flawed guardian, as well as a distinctive look that many Chinese can identify.
We explored various possibilities of Baozha being a smoker, a palace maid and even considered a boy guardian who was a pervert. I realised that Baozha lacked any depth to her character, and I tasked everyone with asking questions involving the characters, their strengths and weaknesses, relationships with other characters, and the world they inhabit. Jolene informed us of her experiences with her young cousins and her grandmother, which helped immensely in finding more truthful characteristics in our characters. This quickly led to connections being made with experiences we can connect to, such as drawing inspiration from Journey to the West, Chinese folk religion and games.
We modelled Baozha after Nezha (哪吒) and Goddess after Guan Yin, the Goddess of Mercy in Buddhism. The game characters used in the final film were modelled after the cast in Journey to the West. We chose to model our character after Nezha, a protection deity often depicted as a young child, especially so in popular media, as it gave us a both a path to explore the idea of a flawed guardian, as well as a distinctive look that many Chinese can identify.
