YDA winner LI Shuqin on frog-themed dreams and dealing with loss

Have you always wanted to direct? What has your directing journey looked like so far?

I didn't specifically dream of becoming a director, but I always wanted to create my own imaginary worlds. As a child, I wrote fantasy stories based on my friends and drew cartoon characters of each person. Eventually, I fell in love with animated films and began learning animation. My graduation work, To the Moon and Back, feels like the start of my directing journey. 

I've lost my grandparents and feel guilty for missing my grandmother's funeral. Creating this story was a way for me to say goodbye to her.

Shuqin's graduation work, To the Moon and Back, felt like the start of their directing journey.

To The Moon and Back is a fictional narrative with elements that feel very personal. How much have your own experiences informed the story?

The story actually started from three strange dreams I had in a row. In the first dream, I saw a frog giving birth like a human. In the second, I was in the centre of a pool, surrounded by thousands of frogs. In the third, a frog was biting my toes. I wanted to turn these dreams into a film and kept wondering why they came to me.

 In this perspective, death is not an end but a transformation into another form of life, continuing in a cycle. 

These dreams reminded me of my childhood tadpoles. There was a park near my home with a pond, and one spring, I put some tadpoles in a plastic bottle and took them home. They were black and slippery, and I still remember how they felt. Not long after, they all died. That was my first encounter with death and loss. Now, as an adult, I've lost my grandparents and feel guilty for missing my grandmother's funeral. Creating this story was a way for me to say goodbye to her.

The film features a traditional Chinese child's nursery rhyme, which explores death as a transformative event rather than an ending. 

Can you tell us more about the poem used in the story and its significance?

The poem is a traditional nursery rhyme from southeast China, filled with shifting images. It's told through children's language, but also contains a Chinese understanding of death, in which death is not an end but a transformation into another form of life, continuing in a cycle. The nursery rhyme's ending, where the monk's head is easily chopped off in one line, also shows a sense of brutality. I felt this rhyme fit the story very well.

Shuqin used a frame-by-frame, hand-drawn effect where each frame shows a trace of the last, to resembles how memories always leave something behind.

The film has a really beautiful, varied soundtrack that combines music, poetry and sound effects, how it was made?

The sound for this film was a collaboration with students from the music and sound department at my school, a tradition we have annually. HAMAO Saki, the music composer for my film, also worked on the music for my first-year film. Working with her is always a pleasure. She understands the feelings I want to convey perfectly and beautifully captures this in the music.

You can see remnants of the previous frame because I tried to imitate the frame-by-frame hand-drawn effect, like painting on glass.

For the sound effects, I initially had a general idea, and we discussed it together. Since animation takes a lot of time, we only had a few brief meetings after the animatics were done. Most of the time, the sound team worked independently. Our school also collaborates with professional sound mixing studios each year, and the studio handles the final mix and adjustments for everyone's project.

Through creating the film, Shuqin was able to come to terms with personal experiences and losses. 

Can you tell us more about the practical side of the animation process? What were the highlights and challenges?

I drew this film digitally, mostly using an iPad. I used Procreate for visual design, storyboarding, and animatics, and animated roughly in Clip Studio. After that, I painted the colours in Procreate. You can see remnants of the previous frame because I tried to imitate the frame-by-frame hand-drawn effect, like painting on glass. I drew one frame, pasted it to the next, erased the unnecessary parts, and painted the next frame on top. I used this technique for the memory part of the story because it resembles how memories always leave something behind.

Through her, I gained the courage to face significant losses in my own life.

The most challenging part was animating the movements, especially in the dream sequences. I couldn't make them perfectly match the scenes in my head, but I will try my best in my next film!

What were your aesthetic and stylistic inspirations?

For film directors, I really like Emir Kusturica and Edward Yang. I also admire Bei Dao, a Chinese-American writer. As for animation directors, I'm inspired by Torill Kove and Paul Driessen.