Feng Zikai Authors Online Lectures

 

September 2022


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The Feng Zikai Chinese Children's Picture Book Award has always sought to encourage, discover and promote excellent original content Chinese picture books. The celebrate the talented author / illustrators who submit their works there is Award given every two years after intensive program of evaluation of the many entrants. In 2021, the seventh award ceremony selected the first prize, "Sudan's Rhino Horn", and the best work awards, "Happy Birthday", "Button Soldier", "Little Bear, Run", and " Dung Beetle's Birthday Present". These award-winning works have reached a certain artistic height in terms of children’s interest, humanity, image and text quality and the handling of relationships.

 

The Foundation was pleased to invite Mr. Li Xingming, the illustrator of Sudan's Rhinoceros Horn, and Ms. Jiu'er, the author of Button Soldier, to give two online lectures to the teachers of SSHRA on September 28.  Mr Li’s topic was "Creation and Reading of Wordless Picture Books" and Ms Jiu’er’s subject was the "Birth of a Picture Book".

 

Mr. Li Xingming took his first picture book creation as an example as to how to stimulate inspiration to choose different animal characters to correspond to different people in real life, highlighting the uniqueness of role design. Created by observing animals; then draft painting to ascertain the  composition, reworking a final draft, and then send the package to the editor for text and image editing. As the painter of Sudan's Rhino Horn, Mr. Li Xingming went to Nairobi, Kenya, Africa in 2016 to observe rhinoceroses in their natural habitat so as to understand the story of his character “Sudan”. Finally, through emotion and color, this book presents the deep integration of the writer and painter's creation, which combines the life experience, the passage of time over one’s life, the change of environment and the seasons.  All this with simple, beautiful words combined together alongside warm and powerful pictures compose the song of life. Mr. Li Xingming teacher’s encouraged creators: "Now - make up your mind to do one thing, the whole world will help you!"

 

In the lecture given by Ms. Jiu'er, she mentioned that "human beings are born experts in reading pictures. As long as there are images, they can easily tell stories". She believes that "in words and images, images are language symbols without borders, and symbols are easier to understand than words and can express rich emotions". Her works without words present two different image styles. Firstly, the picture is very simple. The information that interferes with readers is deleted and only useful things are put in the picture. The other is that the pictures are very rich, giving a lot of information to guide readers to understand the story. The award-winning "Button Soldier" belongs to the second style. This book is a wordless picture book with a strong sense of design. From the cover to the ring lining, from the mouth to the back cover, the painter presents a series of continuous scenes with camera-like pictures, and the reader can complete the whole narrative through imagination.

 

Lecture playback: please click the link or scan the QR code:

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