Description:

‘A Bite That Takes Me Home’ is a motion piece that aims to support Chinese immigrants in Auckland to preserve the traditions through food celebrations and passing knowledge down.

Being a part of this group, I know how much migrants struggle with their cultural identity in new environments. This can lead to a cultural identity crisis that destroys their well-being and prevents them from achieving better lives. Therefore, I want to encourage them to reunite with their home culture, while bringing their inside story out and bridging the minority groups with wider society.

I tested various interactive possibilities before coming up with this story. It showcases Chinese food traditions and customs in the timeline of the four main Chinese festivals in each season. For example, the sacred ancestor worshipping in spring, rice dumplings wrapped with lotus leaves in summer, mooncakes and family myth time in autumn, and the endless feast and new year’s fireworks in winter. These food practices will bring Chinese immigrants back to their childhood memories while watching these scenes. Rooted in these flashbacks are the deep meaning and beliefs about how the Chinese connect with nature, the deceased, and the community.

Aesthetically, this motion piece is significantly influenced by ancient Chinese graphics and artwork. A consistent colour palette of saturated red, bright blue, dark green, golden yellow, and cyan helps build up the tone of voice as unique and vivacious. While also being a “kaleidoscope” composed of various semiotics in Chinese culture by applying pattern treatments, inspired by Chinese folk art, such as paper cutting, embroidery, woodcarving, ink painting, etc.

These illustrations are rooted in my memories back from my hometown. Each window, roof tile and even door handle are drawn by hand and heart. The hand-drawn texture can add warmth to the objects, which aligns with the values of Chinese craftsmanship and imperfection in nature. The fluidic transitions in animation then turn the still genre painting into a lively story.

As a junior motion designer, this project is admittedly challenging but exciting to produce as my passion project. I improved a lot as an illustrator, art director and animator throughout this process. Using a nonlinear design thinking methodology at the base of it all. A circle of researching, ideating, testing, and reflecting. In terms of motion workflow, it’s the first project in that I developed concepts, made director’s boards, planned the schedule and adjusted the workload to make pre-production/production as smooth as possible.
The choice in ultrawide format represented a spread reel of Chinese calligraphic artwork. The project was intended to be in the form of a short form of animation that can be shared online or presented physically with large-scale LED screens to help showcase that community connectedness. I hope more people can see it, get invigorated by the joyful vibe and be proud of their home culture.