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10 cgw j a n u a r y • f e b r u a r y • m a r c h 2 0 2 3 he Canadian film Eternal Spring is the country's official Oscar submission for Best International Feature and explores a dramatic heist of China's state TV airwaves by a group of repressed Falun Gong adherents. The doc- umentary is presented via animation and is told from the point of view of accomplished comic artist Daxiong, whose life was turned upside down by these events. In addition to telling the story of the heist, the doc also reveals the artistic process behind the film's animation, which is woven into the film's narrative. The illustrator sets out to understand an event that deeply impacted his life. He carries the trauma of torture and the longing for a lost home. All of this is processed and communicated through his pen. Eternal Spring is the work of director Jason Lous (Ask No Questions), animation director David St-Amant (Arrival), and pro- ducer Yvan Pinard (La Face cachée de la Lune). The goal was to bring Daxiong's drawings off the static page and to give the audience a sense of place, but also to keep the authenticity of his work intact. The challenge was to bring these 2D assets into a 3D space. Early on, the team determined the best way to maintain the au- thenticity of Daxiong's aesthetic was to simply use his actual art. They created a 'universal character' that could take the shape of anything anthropomorphic. This character would become a projec- tion support for Daxiong's drawings. Early in the collaboration, Daxiong began to sketch out dark imag- es that conjured the terror he recalled in having endured persecution and witnessing those around him disappear. By matching the sil- houette of the artwork, they could project it on geometry that could be animated. Once the animation was complete, they purposefully delayed random points on the mesh to create a noisy smearing ef- fect that matched the style of the brush strokes. This technique was applied to multiple art pieces that were laid out in 3D and became a sequence that played past the midpoint of the film as Daxiong faces his traumatic past. The style of this sequence, being black and white, gave the film- makers freedom to later add ink strokes chasing Daxiong's character through the scene. These strokes were Daxiong's own real-life brush strokes. They then shrink-wrapped the strokes to the ground, which revealed the ground's shape and volume. Relying on 2D artwork was the most efficient way for the team to model, texture and shade environments in a way that was uniform and fit the artistic goals of the film. Using rough drawings and sto- ryboards, they defined the general volumes of a scene with simple ANIMATING CANADA'S POWERFUL BEST INTERNATIONAL FEATURE OSCAR SUBMISSION The film features the art of accomplished comic artist Daxiong.