Takeover Tuesday with Caibei Cai
An interview with Caibei Cai: designer and animator who lives in Shenzhen, China.
Q&A with Caibei Cai
Read time: 3min
Mack Garrison:
Hi, Caibei! Let's start at the beginning: how did you start your career in animation?
Caibei Cai:
I studied animation during my undergraduate, and after I received MA Animation degree from Royal College of Art, I started working as a freelancer. I have made some advertisements, music videos and visual designs, sometimes I also curate programs for the animation weeks.
No More A-Roving Tour
Mack Garrison:
What's the animation scene like in Shenzhen? Is it a pretty big community?
Caibei Cai:
Shenzhen is a city with many Internet companies, animation is usually used for the APP or games. Normally, they would like to choose conservative artistic styles to cater to the public taste. So it is quite difficult to get a suitable project for me.
Mack Garrison:
Do you mainly work with local clients or do you collaborate internationally?
Caibei Cai:
I often collaborate with some agencies in Shanghai and Beijing. I haven’t worked with foreign agencies before, and I’m willing to try it.
Mack Garrison:
Your style is very unique! The textural and organic approach provides a really tactile feel in a digital space. How did you develop this approach?
Caibei Cai:
Thank you! Seeing can mean touching the texture of a thing as people can see roughness and smoothness. Our eyes can feel the coarse edge of the paper, the smooth silk or the sticky oil bottle. So what I trying to do is invite the audience to touch my film through their eyes. But not passively following the storyline or fully understanding the meaning of the film. For me, the film is like a body, you could feel its’ breath, skin, hair instead of dissecting it’s muscle or organ inside.
Pining
Mack Garrison:
Could you tell us a little bit about your process? How do you come up with ideas for a project?
Caibei Cai:
I am very interested in people’s emotions, especially anxiety. Half Asleep talks about a silent relationship, Pining is the unobtainable feeling and the clocks in my room stops is about the insomnia experience. In the pre-production of Half Asleep, I created a linear story, but I only kept the emotion and removed every specific plot. It is similar to the force triggers tactile, you can’t see the actual force but you could feel the physical changing. As for me, the story plot is similar to the force, which let the audience could feel the changing emotion, so I tried to hide the plot but only left the emotion in the film. Besides, Havelock Ellis mentioned that Touch is the most irrational and emotional in the five senses. So showing the tactile could also enhance the emotional expression in the film.
Half Asleep
Mack Garrison:
I noticed you've received Vimeo Staff Picks for Half Asleep, Pining, and The Clock in my Room Stops; congrats! Do you have a favorite of those three? Why or why not?
Caibei Cai:
I don’t have the favourite one, because I always looking forward to my next film, and I’ve just finished an animation short film called Silver Cave, which is about the hunt, domestication and desire.
Mack Garrison:
How long does it typically take to make this style of animation? Is coming up with the idea the hardest part of bringing your vision to life?
Caibei Cai:
Most of my animation is drawn frame by frame, drawing on paper allows me to touch every frame in the film. But it is really time-consuming. I would like to share the working process of Half Asleep. First, I drew all the movement on the paper with charcoal or soft pastel...
I projected the animation on fabric and recorded it.
Finally, I printed the frames out and re-coloured them.
And when I made the logo intro for the BlackFin Production, I drew the frame by colour pencils, and then scan the frames, finally printed it on the waterslide transparent paper.
Mack Garrison:
What's your proudest professional moment so far?
Caibei Cai:
Probably is the moment I got a tattoo of 1920 X 1080 on my arm.
Mack Garrison:
Any advice you'd like to give the next generation of animators?
Caibei Cai:
Eat well, sleep well, play well, and draw well!