A student-made computer animated short, depicting every child's urge to be free from the overwhelming pressure by teachers and parents to succeed in school, has brought tears to many college students' eyes, bringing back memories of sufferings past.

Water Brain, a 15-minute animated graduation project, was produced by Ani7ime Studios, a group of seven students at the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, Guangdong Province. (One member left the team after the animation was finished.)

The film stars Xiao Le, a runny-nosed school kid complete with black circles of fatigue under his eyes, who is relentlessly forced to bury himself under endless piles of homework by the giant monsters lurking behind him.

As the title suggests, Xiao Le's head is a container filled with water. When he gets overstressed, the water boils and produces stream, which helps the greedy monsters to generate energy for their whole imaginary city.


Screen shot from Water Brain.
One day, Xiao Le discovers a magical paper airplane that can shrink the monsters and help rescue kids. However, soon after he helps free other enslaved students like himself, a sudden rainstorm strikes the city and drenches his paper airplane.

Without their magic weapon, the children have no choice but to continue on serving the greedy monsters as the power plant of their world, spending their childhood in misery boiling their brains away.

"What we want to say is pressure just doesn't go away when you grow up. The pressure of schoolwork is replaced by the pressure of society," said Liang Jiawen, head of Ani7ime Studios.

The meanings associated with the schoolbag-shaped monsters are different from one viewer to another. For Liang, they represent the immense suffering inflicted from his last 10 years of education. Before going to college, he said he struggled with grades.

Grades were above everything else at that time," Liang said.
The student-animated short, posted on the Internet last month, was applauded by many students of the creators' same age group.


Liang Jiawen (third from right) and other members of Ani7ime Studio (above). Xiao Le (left), main character of Water Brain, produced by the studio. Photo courtesy of Liang Jiawen
Huo Xiuyi, a 19 year-old university student in Beijing, said she was touched by this charming and unique story.

"The monster is like both my teacher and parents, who kept pushing me to study all along," said Huo.

The storyline also comments on need to foster and develop childhood creativity, something that is often sacrificed for competitiveness.
"This short proves that we do have talent and ideas, but sometimes they all go to waste because of censorship," added Liang.

Water Brain, which received the Best Graduation Film Award at the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, now gets ready for SIGGRAPH 2009, an international exhibition of computer animation and graphics, held in New Orleans in the US in August.

Source: Global Times