In 2011, a domestic hot-blooded animation called "Star Travels" was premiered on CCTV Children's Channel. So far, the Douban score has risen to 9.6 points, becoming a milestone "hot-blooded country comic". The miracle journey of Rainbow Sea, McDonald and his friends that was agreed in the past, accompanied by Gao Ran's lines "fly high up" and "people who believe in miracles are as great as miracles", it still makes them so amazing. Human tears.

"Out of the Earth" poster

11 years later, the new animated film "Out of the Earth" adapted from "Star Travels" set sail. Director Hu Yibo and his team took six years to build it and released it nationwide on July 16. The film is produced by Caitiaowu, which has produced cinema-driven movies such as "The Return of the Great Sage" and "The Devil of Nezha" in recent years. It is the opening work of the newly launched "National Style Science Fiction" series after "Jiang Ziya" and "Jiang Ziya".
The film tells the story of the universe encountering an energy crisis. In the name of protecting the earth, the Galaxy Eyes, a high-level force, plotted the "Sky Wall Project" in an attempt to turn the earth into a cosmic "charging treasure", and the earth is about to be forced to become the victim of the higher galaxy. Against this background, the teenager McDonald, who regards flying as his ideal, unexpectedly shoulders the important task of rushing out of the earth and defending his homeland.

"Star Travels" has a rating of 9.6 on Douban

As an IP that has accumulated for more than ten years, the release of "Out of the Earth" is a special existence worthy of mention in the theater animation movies. In recent years, domestic animated films have been directed to all ages, most of which are based on Chinese myths. Since "Journey to the West: The Return of the Great Sage", domestic animation films have set off a wave of new myths and legends. "Nezha's Devil Child Comes into the World", "White Snake: The Origin", "Jiang Ziya" and several upcoming "Yang Jian" animations, all continue the creative idea of myth adaptation. Although these animations have achieved good results at the box office, they have also caused domestic animation films to fall into the dilemma of homogenization.
In contrast to the animation works of science fiction, a large number of high-quality science fiction animation works have emerged in Hollywood and Japan, but Chinese animation is still less involved in the field of science fiction. Just like McDonald's going to Rainbow Sea, Hu Yibo also wants to take an adventure in the field of sci-fi animation, opening up a new direction for Chinese animation.

"Out of the Earth" stills

In order to integrate national style with science fiction and create a sci-fi animation with Chinese characteristics, the main creative team collects wind in old Beijing Hutongs, old factories in Anshan and other places, and the scene design is constantly overturned and reinvented, striving to build a real, credible, friendly and familiar world . On the screen, the film combines the "Old Beijing" national style with the future "science fiction" imagination: the antique Bell and Drum Tower confronts the Galaxy Eye full of science and technology, the towering factory with undercurrents watching the calm Chinatown... You can see the team Imagination on scene collision.
The creative process of "Out of the Earth" not only tested the imagination of the main creative team, but also required the creators' spirit of "death struggle". According to statistics, from 2021 to 2022, of the 56 new domestic animation films released, only 9 are two-dimensional animations. Under the circumstance that "two-dimensional hand-painting" is no longer the mainstream of the market, the main creative team has shown the ingenuity and romance of sticking to two-dimensional: the film took six years to make, with more than 120,000 hand-painted manuscripts weighing 1 ton. It took three months to produce only one "long shot" of the city's style, and the quality and quantity of special effects and fighting shots are also the conscience of Guoman.

"Out of the Earth" stills

As the passionate youth memory of the post-95s and post-00s, in the past 11 years, after this IP has gone through a series of dramas and online animation movies, the story of "Rainbow Sea" will finally meet the audience in the cinema. This time the cinema will meet again. See, it has a special meaning for Star Games fans and director Hu Yibo.
In fact, 2011, the year when "Star Travels" was born, was the era when the Chinese animation market was occupied by younger works. The coldness of CCTV's premiere made the team sigh that "the time was not right". The original 52-episode "Star Travels" was In the end, it was stopped after only 25 episodes were broadcast. After all, the audience failed to see the protagonist McDonald reach the promised rainbow sea. Later, the webcast of "Star Travels" touched the youth group by "mistaken hits" and was very popular. In the past ten years, Guoman has gradually developed, and the age of the audience in the animation market has rekindled the determination to fly this "Guoman Left Pearl" again.
This time, "Out of the Earth" will continue the "hot-blooded second sense and youthful spirit" of the characters of the original "Star Travels", and tell an adventure story with a different setting from the original story, in a "parallel universe" attitude, A return to the origins of Star Trek.

Screenshot of "Star Travel"

"Rush Out of the Earth" continues the original "Star Travels" characters' "passionate second sense and youthful spirit"

In 2010, Hu Yibo, who had just graduated, participated in the production of the animation "Star Travel", and now he has passed his thirties. Over the past 10 years, the animation industry is changing, age and experience are changing, but what remains the same is his persistence in "Star Journeys", from TV dramas to online movies, to the first movie on the big screen, he never forgets that. The promise of the rainbow sea.
In 2017, "Star Travels: Storm Famila" was launched on iQIYI. This movie was originally planned to be three films. After the second film was launched in 2020, due to poor word of mouth and broadcast volume, Hu Yibo was once on Weibo. Bo issued a "farewell letter", saying that the "Star Travels: Storm Famira" online movie project has ended, and "Storm Familla 2" has become the last work of the series.
Over the years, Hu Yibo has lived in the universe of "Star Travels", even far more than the time he spends with his family and friends in his life. "Star Travels" has already become a part of his life. Sometimes he doesn't quite know whether he shaped the story or the story in turn shaped him. He said: "Whenever I encounter difficulties and I can't persevere, there is a character like McDonald's in my mind, saying 'It's okay, let's try again, let's not give up.' It seems that I got these virtual characters instead. The feedback from them is that they protected such a corner of my heart during the difficult creative process, and the young man in my heart was taken care of by them, and it has come to this day step by step."
Before the film was released, Hu Yibo accepted an exclusive interview with The Paper, telling the story of his journey to the "rainbow sea" in his heart.

Hu Yibo

【dialogue】
Hot-blooded teenagers always stand on the side of "eggs"
The Paper: The construction and erection of the worldview in the science fiction theme is very important. Could you please introduce the worldview of "Out of the Earth"?
Hu Yibo: We have a core concept called regeneration ball system. Science and technology have been making continuous progress, but the development of science and technology is subject to energy. With the exhaustion of energy, it will be difficult for civilization on the planet to develop. The regeneration ball system can absorb stellar-level energy. The premise of our story is that every civilization in the universe needs to be supported by powerful energy, so that civilization can enter the next level. And there are evil civilizations that hope to turn the earth in the film into a regeneration ball to absorb the energy of stars, so as to achieve the purpose of lifting the energy crisis in the universe. This is the premise of a story.
On the basis of this worldview, we think more about how to construct this overhead world. Although the place where the story takes place is nominally called the earth, it is actually not the earth in our real life. It has its unique humanistic state.

"Out of the Earth" stills

The Paper: In the past, we have seen that most animation settings are going back to the past, and will it be more difficult to create "future-oriented" animations?
Hu Yibo: Personally, it will be more difficult. For example, to do some adaptations of ancient themes, it has some well-known background settings that need no explanation. Who is Chang'e in Chang'e Flying to the Moon? Why did Hou Yi shoot down the sun? These are all familiar to all of us Chinese. If I want to talk about a certain dynasty, I can find relevant historical materials. There are some current references for the styles of buildings and people's clothing at that time. But if we are going to tell a story in the future, we need to figure it out on our own. We don’t know if the design is right or not. Is this arrangement the optimal solution? There may be a lot of repetition and trial and error in this process.
The Paper: Now the positioning of this animation is "national style technology". How does the design combine traditional elements with future sci-fi?
Hu Yibo: There are a lot of sci-fi works in Hollywood and Japan, but there are relatively few sci-fi animations with Chinese characteristics. What I hope to do is a sci-fi work that is familiar to Chinese people and has a Chinese warmth, and can combine the futuristic sense of things that we feel intimacy in our daily life.
We tried many different styles, and finally we settled on the old Beijing around us. I have lived in Beijing for more than 20 years and have a deep love for Beijing city. I wanted to simply incorporate the scenes in my life into this sci-fi theme, and it took me a long time to travel to various places to study the Beijing Hutongs, the streets and architectural styles that are very popular. Then consider how to combine with sci-fi elements.
For example, there is a building in the center of the city, which is a relatively sci-fi bell and drum tower. I have always been particularly interested in the Bell and Drum Towers in Beijing, because no matter how the dynasties change and the time changes, it is like a twilight drum and a morning bell, constantly protecting the city. Therefore, we retained the traditional architectural structure of the Bell and Drum Tower, and added a lot of metal, mechanical and technological devices; there are also very distinctive elements of Rabbit, including some small signboards on the street that everyone may smile at, some I believe many people can find a sense of intimacy in the style of shops and houses that are full of life.

"Out of the Earth" stills

The Paper: As the founder of "Star Travels", which cores of the original work should be retained during the adaptation process? Which parts have the latest updates?
Hu Yibo: I think the first thing to keep is this kind of hot-blooded middle school feeling and youthful spirit. In the face of strong external pressure, in the face of many injustices and many oppressions, the protagonist can always resist firmly, always stand on the side of the egg, stand on the side of the weak, and fight without compromise. This is consistent. .
In addition, the ethnic group in the original work must also be adhered to. When we look at foreign superhero themes, a certain person is the son of heaven and is extremely powerful and can save the world. The world of "Star Travels" is not like this. The protagonist is just an ordinary boy with flesh and blood. During his adventure, he will also face powerful frictions, collisions with the world, and even feel powerless.
There is a scene in the film, when our protagonist was shot down by a missile and fell down, all the inhabitants of the earth flew the kite in their hands together to help him avoid the missile and cover the hero to fly again to break through the obstacles. What we want to express is our Chinese people's own feelings of home and country, and our collective strength transcends individuals.
At the same time, we have created a new world view. The earth has experienced a meteorite attack, and most of the entire planet has become a waste area. Humans cannot survive, and only a small part of the area has survived. The protagonist's father wants to go to the depths of the universe to find such a way to restore the earth to its original state. The motivation and goals of the protagonist's father have changed. The former father was a long-distance traveler, and home was just his starting point. This time, we made home a destination. They went on adventures for the sake of a common home, and he was going to return home in the end. McDonald's original goal was to break through the blockade of the villain's Galaxy Eyes and find his father, but in the end, when he found that there was a huge crisis in his homeland on Earth, he gave up the opportunity to find his father, and returned to save his homeland. The difference from the original is also an expression of our own country and our own homeland in this era.

"Star Travels" stills

The spirit of craftsmanship creates a two-dimensional "big scene"
The Paper: As a theatrical film, "Out of the Earth" is bound to require an upgrade in many audio-visual scenes. What upgrades and attempts have you made in audiovisual this time?
Hu Yibo: Because of the cinema movie, we still hope to produce a particularly good picture quality. Our own film is a two-dimensional hand-painted craftsmanship. It is more drawn by people one by one, but it still has many movie-level "big scenes". It contains a lot of difficult special effects fighting scenes, which requires a lot of scheduling movements of such shots and a wide range of actions of characters. What we use is actually computer animation, which simulates the two-dimensional hand-painted style in a three-dimensional way, combined with Traditional hand-painting, the two techniques are combined to present a flexible camera position for everyone. Its advantage is that it can present very exaggerated movements, and at the same time it is a hand-painted picture effect.

"Out of the Earth" stills

For example, there is a scene where our protagonist is evading missile tracking. There is a lot of this kind of aerial combat footage. The camera keeps spinning, and now it looks very cool. There is also a scene where our villain's base turret is broken down by the protagonist. This is also a very grand scene, and everyone can pay more attention to it when the time comes.
Including a scene of kite flying in the film. If we use 3D software to do it, it will be relatively simple, because it has "fixed assets", and it only needs to do the movement of the camera. But if it is two-dimensional, it contains a lot of technical difficulties. Each of a large number of characters has to interact with the kite, and then every frame of the character, the kite, and the spaceships and missiles flying in the air have to move. There are a lot of these For this kind of layering, we need to grind it frame by frame. It often happens that we have finished painting again and find that some small places do not match.
We may have finally counted this shot. We have divided it into more than 200 layers. There are about 24 frames in one second, and every frame cannot be wrong. This is an extremely large amount of work. . Now good two-dimensional talents are becoming more and more scarce, and we have always been in the situation of very few people to complete such a film.
In addition to the picture, I believe that when you enter the theater, there is another aspect of the auditory part. This is more difficult to achieve when doing fan dramas and online movies. This time for the cinema version, we made a lot of bold innovations. In the creation of music, we found the music teacher Zhu Yunbian, the music teacher of "The Devil Comes into the World" and "The Legend of Wukong", and tried a lot of symphony and folk music to match the picture. Made some very large and magnificent soundtracks, I believe it will give everyone a refreshing feeling.

Hu Yibo on the set of "Out of the Earth"

The Paper: When you said goodbye to "Famila" before, you wrote in the letter that you have a lot of regrets about this work. Is there something that can be made up for in this production?
Hu Yibo: There are indeed many regrets before. For example, the drama has always been limited by the length of the episode and the structure of the technology. In fact, the story cannot be told completely. For example, Familla, everyone always feels that the most climax part is suddenly stopped, and it feels that a complete story has not been told.
In the creation of this film, although it is a series of worldviews and a huge story, I hope it is "Out of the Earth", even if you don't know the cause and effect, you haven't seen "Star Journeys". That is such a story that anyone can come in and understand, and it is a very complete story that I think can be understood by all audiences. This is also a time for me to make up for Familla's regret at that time.
The Paper: In recent years, we have seen that most of the popular animations on the market are 3D animations. 2D animation is now almost synonymous with "craftsmanship". In the past two years, I have often heard that a large number of animation talents have moved to the game industry. What do you think of the problem of brain drain in this category?

"Out of the Earth" stills

Hu Yibo: I think we need to face up to this problem. Whether it is the competition in the animation category or the flow to the game industry, it actually shows that the development in other places is more benign, and the development stage may be better. Everyone always says that the animation industry is an industry that "generates electricity with love", but it always has the problem of battery life. All animation practitioners have a need in real life, which is a normal choice. I don't think it matters. Can't say to blame other industries for robbing people.
What we need to consider is why do we have such a problem? Why can't I keep a group of people who love it so much. In fact, the fundamental reason is that in this industry, the volume of works that it can accommodate is still far from enough, and more good works are needed to support this industry. At the same time, we need to be able to create more sustainable profit models and make them a better ecosystem. I think this is more important.
Many people around me often talk to me, "I may have worked in a game company for a long time, but I still like to do animation." I believe that if the ecology of the animation industry becomes more benign, many people can come back.
Exploring the Path for Chinese Science Fiction Animation
The Paper: From "Star Travels" in 2011 to "Out of the Earth", what changes have you made to yourself and your works in more than ten years?
Hu Yibo: In fact, our "Star Travels" has always been a story of heroic complex, but the view of heroes when I was young is different from now. I remember that when I wrote the first season of "Star Travels", I was still a freshman after graduation. At that time, I felt that a hero is a person who is indomitable and can change the state of the world with his passion. This is also similar to the previous state of McDonald's.
Now after 10 years, I have also become a middle-aged uncle. I have experienced the frustration and powerlessness in the process of colliding with the world. I know that it is not the burning of the small universe that can change this world, this world May be icy. And the real hero is the one who sees the cruelty and ruthlessness of the real world, and knows that hard work may not be rewarded and results, but is still willing to work hard for it. This is the image of a hero in my heart at this stage.
So this time McDonnell also had such a change. In the process of constantly trying to rush out of the earth, he faced many choices, faced a lot of pain, and had to pay a great price, but in the end, after he realized all these situations, he still Persist in breaking through and resisting.

"Out of the Earth" stills

After more than ten years, the time I spent with the characters in this work and the time I lived in the world in this story far exceeded the time I spent with my family and friends. Sometimes I feel that I actually live in two worlds, and the world of Star Travel has long been a part of my life. I remember the day the film was finished, I felt empty in my heart, as if this matter was over, and I didn’t know when I could meet them again next time.
Sometimes I don't really know if I shaped the story or if the story shaped me in turn. It seems that some of my views on the world, including some of my attitudes in doing things, are influenced by the characters in the film. Sometimes I may encounter difficulties and can't persevere. There may be a character like McDonald's in my mind. Say it's okay, "Let's try again, let's not give up."
I am really grateful to these avatars. They have protected that corner of my heart during these years of difficult creation, and my inner middle-schooler is also cared for by them, and I have come to this step step by step.
The Paper : After the release of the "Storm Familla" series, you also suffered a lot of criticism. Will this affect your creation? How do you digest these negative reviews?
Hu Yibo: I think the fate of the creator may always be misunderstanding, the original intention of your expression, and the error that may be received by others in the end. There will be different sounds, which is a normal situation. What we can do is to absorb nutrients that are meaningful to us from these different voices, and help us to do the next step step by step. The regrets and criticisms I have received before, I hope to solve them in this film, and I also hope that the voices of different channels can become my strength to move forward. This is more meaningful than praise.

The "Storm Famira" series is in the middle range of 6-8 points on Douban

The Paper: In the six years that this animated film has been polished, it can see that there are big hits in the market that break through the ceiling of animation, and some animations with good reputation have not performed well at the box office. Now that your film is finally coming out, what are your thoughts and expectations?
Hu Yibo: I definitely hope to have a good return. In this way, the entire IP can develop better, and we may have more confidence in the future to create the next work. But this industry is full of ups and downs, and there are a lot of uncertainties. We said that we want to make an original two-dimensional sci-fi work, and there will be some limitations of the original work. From the beginning, many people questioned whether this is true May I? For us, we have no way to predict that this thing will have a good result, we have to do it. Like I said just now, I understand the current hero, that is, he is still willing to try in the face of an uncertain thing. Our mentality is also the same. Maybe the last 6 years of efforts have not achieved particularly ideal results, but I think this industry always needs some people to do something different, so we hope to bring something to the audience in addition to myths, In addition to the theme of national style, it is a path of its own Chinese science fiction.