Fuwa or China's ancient golden wedding.

Five China elves were born with the illusion of the Olympic Games, conveying the ideas of peace, friendship, progress and harmony ... Childish smiles sent warm invitations to children and parents all over the world-

June, 2005165438+1October1Sunday evening. The Beijing Workers' Gymnasium, the oldest sports building in New China, is dressed in festive costumes. As night falls, Beijing will enter the countdown to the 2008 Olympic Games 1000 days. In the commemorative activities held for this important occasion,

The mascot of the 29th Olympic Games was finally revealed.

/kloc-at 0: 05: 20, Jia Qinglin, the leader of the Party and the state, touched the switch on the release device with his hand, and five laser beams from the release device were projected on the big screen, which outlined the outline of the mascots, and five lively and lovely mascots were fixed on the big screen. At the same time, five 2-meter-high inflatable mascots stepped onto the stage from behind the big screen-this is the long-awaited mascot of the 29th Olympic Games.

The mascot of Beijing Olympic Games consists of five personified doll images, collectively called Fuwa, which are called Beibei, Jingjing, Huanhuan, Yingying and Nini respectively. The pronunciation of these five names constitutes the homonym of "Welcome to Beijing".

Beibei turned into a fish swimming in the boundless sea, Jingjing played an innocent panda in the dense forest, like a Tibetan antelope running on the vast grassland to say hello, and Nini sang happily in the sky like a light Jingyan. They gathered around Huanhuan, the Olympic flame symbolizing the Temple of Hera in ancient Olympia, and formed a sonorous word "Welcome to Beijing" with their respective names, sending invitations to children, their brothers and sisters and their parents all over the world.

The mascot is the "upstart" of the Olympic family. As a representative of oriental civilization, what kind of notes can China add to this never-ending Olympic movement?

Compared with the 100-year history of the Olympic Games, mascots are just new members of the Olympic family. 1972 At the Munich Olympic Games, a puppy named Valdi first appeared as a mascot at the Olympic Games. Since then, the mascot has become one of the core images of many Olympic Games and an important carrier to convey the Olympic spirit and the concept of this Olympic Games. As the image ambassador of an Olympic Games, he appeared widely in all fields of the Olympic Games, and was deeply loved by people, especially children, with his lovely image and distinctive personality, and became the most popular image of previous Olympic Games.

Judging from the selection of mascots in recent Olympic Games and other major world events, there is a design trend from directly selecting animal images to recreating them as prototypes, and there is also a brand-new interpretation to create new images. In the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games, the deformed images of three unique exotic animals-mole, kookaburra and platypus-were selected as mascots, representing land, water and air respectively. In the 2004 Athens Olympic Games, Athena and Fevos, two mascots created according to ancient Greek mythology, won a full house applause with their rich Greek cultural characteristics and lovely shapes, and became the most "hot-selling" featured goods in the Athens Olympic Games. Every Olympic Games will choose a suitable mascot according to the history and culture of the host country. Every mascot is unique. They all have vibrant personalities and embody the Olympic ideal of friendship and fair competition. Mascots personify the Olympic value and give it an actual shape, which is incomparable to other images in today's Olympic symbol system.

Once again, the whole world pays attention to China and looks forward to Beijing! In order to create a mascot that is also loved by the whole world, on August 5, 2004, BOCOG officially sent an invitation to professional design institutions and designers around the world to openly solicit mascot designs for the 2008 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

The solicitation activities have received enthusiastic response at home and abroad. Can Olympic mascots be produced from effective collection of works? It has become a long-standing problem in the hearts of relevant staff.

5: 30 on June 5438, 2004+February 1 is the final deadline. In the past four months, BOCOG Cultural Activities Department, which is in charge of the collection work, has become the busiest place, with consultation calls, letters and emails pouring in from Beijing, the whole country and all over the world. More than 3,000 letters and amateur design drafts, and countless consultation calls have kept the staff in the collection office busy. After qualification certification in accordance with relevant regulations, 662 valid entries were confirmed. Among them, Chinese mainland works 6 1 1, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan works 12 and 39 foreign works.

The solicitation activities attracted great creative enthusiasm of China designers. Except for two provinces and regions in Chinese mainland, there are design institutions and personnel involved. Overseas Chinese and students studying in China also sent their love works. Many foreign designers are also very concerned about this activity. Designers from Britain, the United States, Canada and countries such as South Korea, Japan, Singapore and India in Asia also sent their works. In their works, there are not only images of giant pandas, the Monkey King, Tibetan antelopes and elk which are very familiar to the public, but also many new shapes with distinctive expressive force and unique style. Most of the works not only show the characteristics of China, but also absorb the creative concept of Olympic mascots.

On June 5438+February 65438+May 2004, according to the Rules for the Selection of Mascot Design for Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, the Olympic Organizing Committee invited 24 experts and scholars who have made outstanding achievements in the field of art and culture at home and abroad to make artistic selection for all valid entries according to the requirements of mascot design. On the same day, 662 works were laid out on the table in the conference hall on floor 0/6 of Bocog/Kloc-the judges had to select 10 works that they thought were satisfactory.

Pang Bangben, the painter and executive vice president of the Comic Branch of China Oriental Culture Research Association, recalled that their choice at that time was quite difficult. Many of their favorite images may have thousands of similar things, which leads to the trouble of repeated inspection of intellectual property rights in the future. Due to the particularity of mascots, space should be reserved for future materials, cartoon shooting of mascots and extensive market development. Therefore, there are many factors to consider in the initial evaluation.

From June 5 to July 6, 2004, BOCOG held a working meeting of the mascot recommendation and selection committee. The 10 recommendation selection committee, including famous artists Jin Shangyi and Chang Shana, reviewed and commented on 56 works that entered the recommendation selection stage. Among them, the art selection committee selected 50 works and recommended the selection committee to nominate 6 works. After a full analysis of the selected works, the recommendation selection committee suggested that six works, namely panda, tiger, dragon, the Monkey King, rattle and Ah Fu, should be taken as the revised direction of the mascots for the Beijing Olympic Games.

What makes the revision team embarrassed is that it is difficult for each work to meet the requirements of the Olympic mascot. Every dark cloud has a silver lining. China Fuwa surfaced.

Although the direction of revision has been determined, can mascots be produced from these six works in the end? Nobody has a bottom. In March this year 1 1, a nine-member revision team led by the famous artist Han Meilin gathered in Yanqi Lake, Huairou. Their task is to put forward revised plans for six projects.

The revision team immediately entered the intense work. Around the six works, many characters have been turned over and over. 500 sheets of A4 copy paper were used up in one morning. They also read a lot of reference materials and revised six works from different angles. But fun is not easy to use, easy to use is similar to the past, not suitable.

The jury was recommended to be very optimistic about the rattle. Everyone thinks it can play a role in creating an atmosphere, and it is also very fun. However, the rattle has no feet and lacks elements of movement, which has great obstacles in its application. After checking the weight, it is also found that the mascot chosen by China Consumers Association is the rattle.

The image of the tiger is good, but as a single mascot, it has been used in 1988 Seoul Olympic Games. Panda is an image praised at home and abroad, but the space for re-creation is very limited because it is used too much; The Monkey King is a well-known image of China, but it is difficult to make a breakthrough in modeling; The concept of dragon is very tough, but it has the characteristics of royalty, royalty, and poor affinity, and its image is not very good in the eyes of some westerners. Duff earth tiles are made up of a bunch of small round clay figurines, and they have no feet, showing a strong regional concept. The revision group also put together six works, including a panda, the Monkey King and a tiger, but the shapes and colors were not very good.

One of the most important problems in the revision process is that experts feel that a single work is not enough to meet the needs of designing a mascot with comprehensive meanings. The revision work is in trouble. The "Ji Shen" activities supported by governments all over China made the members of the revision team feel a great responsibility.

In this case, the leaders of BOCOG, while comforting and encouraging everyone, proposed that they could break through the framework of the six works and boldly try to redesign them.

This idea inspired the members of the revision team, who reread the shortlisted works and found that a work composed of five animals was conceptually desirable. So, around the "five-year plan", everyone began to think. There are five rings in the Olympic Games, five elements in China, five continents in the world, and five places in the world, such as "Five Blessingg" and "Five-Year Senior High School Entrance Examination", and they all talked about more than a dozen things related to the five-year plan in one breath.

It was on this day-March 22, 2005 that the idea of creating a group of five mascots was initially decided. China Fuwa has a prototype.

Han Meilin's studio is almost full of mascots. Several mascots competed in modeling, and finally Jingyan surpassed the dragon.

After a short joy, everyone moved to Han Meilin Studio of China Artists Association in Tongzhou District.

What images can you choose from in "Five"? People are really hard to adjust. Some want antelope, some want monkeys, some want Sichuan pandas, some want elk, baiji, dragons and so on. There are no five mascots in the history of the Olympic Games. Even if there are five mascots, people can't hold such great hopes. Choosing who is better has become a difficult problem.

Han Meilin recalled: "I think, isn't the big-headed doll in China very good, and the hat is also very good?" Just associate the hat with the mascot, so that you can wear a tiger hat or a panda hat. Later, we made a big fuss about it and checked a first draft. Five dolls came out. It represents the five elements of gold, wood, water, fire and earth, and blends into the water pattern and bronze culture of painted pottery in China. Fire is the figure of Dunhuang murals. Han Meilin has a very deep memory of this. He said that he took a cold bath that morning and took two pills a day just to make a big fight and give some ideas.

At that time, everyone had a heated discussion and even quarreled for a while; I was silent for a while, working at my desk. Every part of the graphic has read a lot of materials, and added as many cultural elements of China as possible. Wu Guanying, deputy director of the Graphic Design Department of Tsinghua University Academy of Fine Arts, said that at that time, there were more than 70 bags of materials in ordinary schoolbags, which were fully filled with a van. In order to find information, he ran more than 50 times from Haidian to Tongzhou in ten days.

After three months, I drew tens of thousands of pictures and revised them sixty or seventy times. On April 5, 2005, the five shapes were basically finalized. The leaders of the Olympic Organizing Committee saw this work and said that we saw the dawn. With this sentence, the members of the revision team have been hanging for a long time and their hearts have fallen like stones. This is the credit of everyone, the result of brainstorming and the crystallization of collective wisdom. Han Meilin said that revision is a process of re-creation. Without 662 finalists and six revisions, Fuwa would be hard to be born.

On April 29th, the 53rd Executive Committee of BOCOG deliberated and passed the mascot modification plan, and thought that the concept of "China Wa" (flame, panda, fish, Tibetan antelope and dragon) had China characteristics, and choosing a group of images with China cultural representation as the mascot of the Beijing Olympic Games could meet the expectations of all sectors of society. During the "May 1st" period, Han Meilin further revised and improved the "China Eva" plan according to the spirit of the Executive Committee and suggestions from all walks of life. Considering the differences between Chinese and western dragon images, this paper puts forward a modification scheme of replacing the dragon shape with the traditional Beijing kite "Jingyan" shape. In terms of expression techniques, the strokes of the Olympic emblem are combined with the style of the China seal of the Olympic emblem, and the hand-painted techniques of traditional China ink painting are boldly adopted to redraw the images of five dolls, highlighting the lively personality characteristics of the mascots, which has made a major breakthrough in the artistic expression of the overall image. So far, the basic image orientation of the mascot of the Beijing Olympic Games has been basically completed.

Verbruggen, an old friend of BOCOG and chairman of the IOC Coordination Committee, chose August 18. He knew it was an auspicious day for China people, so on this day he sent BOCOG a confirmation letter of the mascot.

On June 9th, the 54th Executive Committee of BOCOG reviewed and approved the revised mascot scheme, and determined the collective name of this group of mascots: China Fuwa.

On August 6th, the Working Group of the Coordination Committee of the International Olympic Committee listened to BOCOG's report on the design of mascots for the Beijing Olympic Games. On August 18, Mr. Verbruggen, Chairman of the Coordination Committee, sent a letter to confirm that the IOC agreed to the design scheme of the mascot for the Beijing Olympic Games. At this point, the mascot design scheme has a formal "hukou".

Because the mascot is the core image of the Olympic Games, it is also the core element of the image landscape elements of an Olympic Games, and it is also an image with great commercial development value. Therefore, legal protection is necessary. This kind of protection is not only completed at home, but also registered and implemented legal protection measures overseas, especially in several major countries, with the assistance of the International Olympic Committee. During the preliminary examination and approval process, BOCOG conducted a large number of industrial and commercial registrations and legal inquiries. This work was successfully completed at the end of 10.

The mascot of Beijing Olympic Games is very creative. It has been widely praised by all walks of life and has become a good friend of children.

In the whole process of creating and modifying mascots, BOCOG did not build a car behind closed doors. In order to understand children's cognition and love for the mascot candidate of Beijing Olympic Games, on April 22nd, BOCOG interviewed and tested 49 third-grade primary school students in Beijing Yucai Primary School and 22 middle and large kindergarten children in Beijing Happy Hour Kindergarten by questionnaire. The results show that 98% of the children think these five dolls are very cute and are good friends or family members. Many children even named them, and some immediately asked, "Where can I buy them?"

A few days later, BOCOG organized a mascot review meeting, inviting people from all walks of life, such as NPC, CPPCC, Municipal People's Congress, CPPCC, democratic parties, Olympic research experts, athletes' representatives, design representatives, etc., to review the mascot candidate works. The evaluation representative spoke highly of the organization of mascot design solicitation, and thought it was well organized, reasonable in operation and confidential, and paid attention to listening to the opinions of all parties.

The vast majority of delegates affirmed the mascot candidate scheme, and thought that this group of works was innovative, ingenious, vivid and unique. The idea of choosing a group of images instead of a single image as the mascot of the Beijing Olympic Games met the expectations of people from all walks of life for the Beijing Olympic Games. The candidate scheme has strong China cultural charm; It is relatively complete in creativity and modeling, embodying Chinese style, national feelings and modernity, and embodying the harmony between man and nature; Compared with previous Olympic Games, there is a certain breakthrough.

The mascots of the 29th Olympic Games achieved a breakthrough in the design of Olympic mascots, and won unanimous praise from experts at home and abroad.

A person in charge of BOCOG believes that compared with previous Olympic mascots, China Fuwa has several innovations and breakthroughs. First of all, in terms of design ideas, animals and people are perfectly combined for the first time. China Fuwa combines human and animals for the first time, emphasizing the concept of humanistic Olympics and highlighting people-oriented.

Secondly, in the design concept, the Olympic elements are directly integrated into the mascot for the first time. Because every Olympic mascot should show the Olympic spirit, and we directly quoted Olympic elements from the Olympic flame, such as the fire baby.

The third breakthrough is in the design and application of mascots, which highlights the personalization of extended use. The mascot consists of headdress and body, which is a complete image, but the headdress part can be completely taken down and developed independently. Every adult and every child can put their favorite "hat" on their heads and dress themselves up as mascots. This kind of application is unprecedented in the past, which enhances the interaction between people and mascots.

Finally, Beijing changed five mascots for the first time in the history of the Olympic Games, which is the most. This is because China's culture is profound and there are too many things to express.

Sun Lijun, dean of Animation School of Beijing Film Academy, said that the mascot of Beijing Olympic Games has several characteristics. First, its shape comes from life and people. It must be lovely, from preschool children to adults and even the elderly. The second is to have China characteristics. Third, it should be suitable for making all kinds of derivative things, such as comics, toys, modeling and activities, which can be used in large-scale scenes. In addition, everyone in China loves auspiciousness, and the mascot should represent the mood of China people, and people of different levels like it.

There are 662 valid works, each of which is a thin thread. The China Fuwa made in groups of five pieces is a rope twisted by thousands of thin threads. The mascot of Beijing Olympic Games is the crystallization of collective wisdom.

Han Meilin said that although the judges decided on the revision direction of six works, the revision team always paid close attention to the creative ideas of the finalists and all 662 effective works, and learned the essence from them. Although they think that the creativity of a single panda, tiger and monkey may not have a good result, as the content of the revision direction, it is still repeatedly studied and revised. In this process, the lines and colors of the works contain elements of China culture. In the end, it provided useful help for them to create China Fuwa.

When making changes to the rattle, Han Meilin told several friends what he thought. In a few days, Han Meilin collected more than 200 rattles at once, almost all kinds of rattles in China.

Jin Shangyi, Chang Shana and other experts in the art world not only fulfilled their duties of recommending members of the selection committee, but also responded positively to BOCOG's request regardless of their age and poor health. BOCOG convened a jury, and they all arrived at the meeting early. In the process of modifying the mascot, many old artists personally participated in the modification of the works and put forward very innovative ideas and opinions.

The author of an effective work, after submitting his own work, wrote to the relevant parties many times, indicating that he didn't care whether the work was selected or not. But because of the creation of mascots, he has been studying and discussing this field. He hopes to share the research results with relevant parties and contribute to the birth of the mascot of the Beijing Olympic Games.

From the Olympic rings to the five-ring colors, from the embryonic form of China Fuwa to the final draft, not only has it been repeatedly demonstrated by dozens of experts, but all sectors of society, including children, have also participated in it. Mascots combine the opinions, efforts and wisdom of many experts and scholars, and relevant departments have also done a lot of work for the collection, selection, release, production and publicity of mascots. The process of making the mascot of Beijing 2008 Olympic Games shows that it is the crystallization of collective wisdom.

……

Five Olympic spirits were born in the world, bearing the rich cultural heritage of China and the pursuit of the Olympic spirit by the people of China. They formed a cheerful little team, bringing passion and joy, health and wisdom, good luck and prosperity to all parts of the world. The concept of China Fuwa is closely related to the theme slogan "One World, One Dream" of the Beijing Olympic Games. They are messengers of peace, and on behalf of hundreds of millions of people in China, they extend a warm invitation to people all over the world ―― Welcome to Beijing. (Wu Dong)