Nearly 30 animation schools in Shanghai hold their first inter-school joint exhibition, unprecedented! Come and open the giant "blind box"
What new talents and new ideas are there in the Shanghai animation industry in the AIGC era? The "Our Festival - Shanghai Animation Inter-school Exhibition" currently being held at the Shanghai Library East Hall brings together young talents from all academic education sectors of Shanghai animation majors, including undergraduate, junior college and secondary vocational education. It is the first time that Shanghai animation major graduation design works are assembled for the public to exhibit as a whole. It is the first time that readers and audiences are invited to participate in the blind opening of a "treasure box". It is a fresh appearance for schools, students and even the industries that these young people may enter in the future.
The metal cabinets, which are gray on the outside and red on the inside, are scattered on each floor of the East Building in the above picture. Each metal cabinet belongs to a school with a major in animation and game design, and highlights the artistic personality expression of the graduates of the school. When you open the cabinet door, you can see the shining points of the "treasure" works.
"This is an unprecedented inter-school joint exhibition of nearly 30 schools in Shanghai that have animation and game design majors." Zhang Wei, secretary general of the Shanghai Animation Industry Association, the curator, said that just like the outside world's perception of each school, there may not be much difference from the outside, but they may not really understand the school's purpose, personality characteristics, student potential, and future direction of each animation and game design major. For schools, in the past, they mostly interacted with each other through internal academic exchanges and never demonstrated their overall strength on the same platform.
Each 1.8-meter-high "treasure box" can be said to contain a lot of secrets. Some schools display red comics as the theme, some schools display interactive content, some set up TV screens to scroll and broadcast the best animation shorts, and some schools are decorated with a wide range of cultural and creative products. Each "treasure box" is pushed by the school after selecting works independently. The selected works belong to the concept of "big animation", including animation, comics, games, design, interaction and other fields. In order to allow each school's graduates to fully demonstrate their own characteristics, the organizers have set only one threshold, which is the number of exhibits, and the rest are left to the students to play freely. If you want to classify, you can see that graduates from universities such as Shanghai Theatre Academy, Tongji University, Shanghai University Film School, and Shanghai University of Technology have achieved great results in animation short films. Some schools focus on IP transformation, and the animation cultural and creative peripherals designed and produced by graduates make the "treasure box" lively and extraordinary.
The first inter-school joint exhibition is not only a display of the achievements of Shanghai animation and game design graduates, but also a "treasure box" for current animation and game companies to discover potential students and reserve talents. Leading ACG companies such as Poker City, Eagle Point Network, and Yibai Animation have set up scholarships for the exhibition and awarded them to students and works they admire; representatives of Shanghai Fine Arts Film Studio awarded certificates to students who received the scholarships. This mechanism explores the virtuous cycle of the school-enterprise linkage platform that showcases teaching results to the society and discovers potential new seedlings and creative solutions for enterprises.
The joint exhibition is hosted by Shanghai Animation Industry Association and Shanghai Library, and co-organized by Shanghai Vocational Education Association Digital Media Art Committee, Tongji University, Shanghai Theatre Academy, Shanghai Academy of Visual Arts, etc. During the exhibition, a thematic forum on talent training and sharing activities by well-known animation directors and game producers will also be held.
Relevant person in charge of Shanghai Library said that more public spaces should be reserved for knowledge-seeking and motivated readers to let society see the talents of young people. Public cultural spaces are not only popular landmarks for checking in, but also about establishing connections with the city, especially sharing works, exchanging ideas, interacting emotionally, and co-creating results. This is the concrete practice of public libraries in implementing the concept of a people's city.
