An Interview with a Chinese Painter at Ubisoft | Sharing Unique Visual Effects Creation in “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse”

Good morning everyone! Have you heard of the big event today?

The animated film Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse has been released, scoring 9.0 on Douban with the  freshness 97% on Rotten Tomato. If you haven’t seen it yet, you can take a look at the trailer below (The following article does not contain spoilers, so please feel free to enjoy).

No matter how you feel about this movie, I think it’s brilliant! SONY has made something new out of the old IP of Spider-Man once again.

When watching the trailer, have you been surprised by the unique visual effects of the film?

In order to create a completely different visual experience from the past, SONY spent a lot of efforts and even applied for patent protection for such visual effects. ( let’s applause for Sony! )

The artist plays a vital role in presenting such a visual style effect. This time, we are very honored to invite the concept designer @lingy000 of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse to share his experience.

Let’s first take a look at a few scenes designed by this master for Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.

Original Painter- Dazhi: Hello, I am very glad that you can accept this interview. Can you introduce yourself first?

Lingy000: Hello everyone, I am Lingyun, or @lingy000 (online), currently serving as a concept designer at Ubisoft Montreal.

He has taken part in several projects during the last few years, released works including Eidos’s games “Deus Ex: Mankind Divided”, “Shadow of the Tomb Raider” and Sony’s animation Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.

I graduated from the College of Electroning Engineering of Chongqing University of Posts and Telecommunications. After graduation, I studied 3D animation for several months at GDC. As I was interested in painting, I entered a game company to do concepts designing, continuously learning to make progress at work.

(Is this electricity generation with love in legends?)

Original Painter – Dazhi: Seeing that you have been involved in the production of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, what kind of work are you responsible for? What difficulties have you encountered in the process of creation?

Lingy000: We are responsible for the work of Visual Development, which means to determine the style of the film. It focuses on adding stylized hand-painting effects to real scenes in life.

We have scene references like streets, residential areas, high-rise buildings in New York, etc. We use our own paintings to reproduce stylized and authentic scenes based on these references.

The difficulty in the creative process is that the painting has to be particularly delicate to ensure perfect images, which requires a lot of patience.

Original Painter – Dazhi: Is there any special place to participate in the production of the film? What interesting things have you encountered in the process?

Lingy000: This project is one of the most hand-painted projects I have ever participated in, because the style of painting has a great influence on the film.

The painting itself is the most interesting thing, and the painters in the group are the painters I admire most, and they are very motivated to draw with them.

(So everyone should work hard to get in touch with the masters and keep learning!)

Original Painter – Dazhi: Your small exercises on Weibo show a strong personal style. Have you got any special methods of painting when practising? Is there a focus for each exercise?

Lingy000: Sometimes I do imaginative creating, while at other times I copy photos. I study painting methods and styles when copying photos, and then apply them to my own creations, which earns me twice the result with half the effort.

Original Painter – Dazhi: What advice do you have for novices?

Lingy000: Painting improvement is not easy, and technical means is only a small part of it.

Painting requires an open and flexible mind. You need to see the diversity of the world, appreciate good paintings, think independently, communicate more, and absorb the advantages of others. A positive attitude matters most.

Many masters in previous interviews emphasized the importance of mentality. This may be the experience they have summed up after going through bottlenecks and difficulties.

Painting is a process. Even if you are low in a valley, don’t forget to look up at the stars. Remember to adjust your mentality and make continuous efforts.

[Personal Works]