Mixing art and science
A domestic engineer turns to computer graphics design, Minlu Zhang reports in New York.
Hu Te sets the background of his virtual meeting as a starry universe. He is wearing a minimalistic white shirt, with a short turtleneck that makes him look like an astronaut in a spaceship.
As a computer graphics artist living in San Francisco, Hu, who’s in his 30s, participated in the production of AAA games earlier, too. They are video games with the highest development budgets and levels of promotion, and projects of Industrial Light & Magic, a special effects company created by George Lucas when he began production of the Star Wars films.
Hu now makes CG animation at Pixar. He combines science and art especially well. Hu’s work, Nine Songs, has won many awards, including the Gold Award of the ADC 100th Annual Awards in 2021 — the oldest continuously running industry award, which such artists as Salvador Dali and Andy Warhol also won. He also won the Gold Award of the JIA Illustration Awards in 2021, organized by the Japan Illustration Association.
“A little boy, wearing big pants, holding a big pencil, drawing a picture bigger than me on an easel twice as big as me — that was every weekend in my memory as a child. My father would not prepare materials for me. I just used the same materials as my father, who is an oil painter,” Hu says.
When he got tired, he would run to his mother and draw traditional Chinese paintings on rice paper to relax. At that time, Hu did not regard painting as his profession, and art was only a hobby.
When he was studying software engineering in college, Hu says he found that art had already become a part of his life.
“I cannot live without art,” Hu says. “I started to think about how I could combine science and technology and with art.”
After arriving in the United States, Hu worked as a technical artist for Industrial Light & Magic in many virtual-reality video games, including five Star Wars games, Transformers: The Last Knight VR and Marvel Avengers: Damage Control.
“Based on my background in science and engineering, I can make special effects with algorithms and metrics,” says Hu.
The work he is most proud of is Flesh and Sand, which is directed by acclaimed Mexican film director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu. It was the first virtual-reality project featured at the Cannes Film Festival and was the first to be awarded a special Oscar since the 1995 film Toy Story. Hu was leading the real-time rendering work for the new film.
Although Hu’s projects are mostly “American in style”, he says he identifies with Eastern culture.
“I grew up in China, and I like reading ancient Chinese books, such as
Tao Te Ching. While all my other classmates were reading stories written by Louis Cha (Jin Yong), I liked to read The Hundred Schools of Thought (Zhuzi Baijia). I like Chinese philosophy. Such experiences have rooted me in Eastern culture,” says Hu.
His award-winning artwork, Nine Songs, was created based on Warring States Period (475-221 BC) poet Qu Yuan’s poems. Hu presents the stories of Nine Songs with CG art that he thinks Westerners can understand.
“Nine Songs has been painted by many painters since ancient times. Many of those traditional Chinese paintings are relatively abstract, very vague. For example, Shao Siming, the god of birth, is the symbol of life. Westerners may not understand abstract symbols,” Hu says.
“I want to express the story in a concrete way, telling it through pictures — how people in the stories look, how the animals and plants look, and even how the light looks. So, Westerners may understand the story better and arouse their interest to understand what kind of story Nine Songs is.”
Hu grew up in Northwest China’s Gansu province, where many cultures meet — ethnic Han and Hui, cultures of the ancient western regions and so on.
“Sometimes, just on the bank of the Yellow River, there is a mosque next to a Taoist temple. These strong cultural contrasts and fusion have taken root in me. I also traveled around the country (China) with my parents. In my mind, culture is not limited to one place,” says Hu.
Nine Songs presents his imagination of ancient Chu culture. Another series of works by Hu, Wonders, presents different architectural styles in different places in China. His other works also adopt cultural elements from the Middle East, Japan and India.
“I want to express a point of view that the civilizations of different nations and periods are all very brilliant and splendid. I always try to make myself work with an open mind,” says Hu.