AXL LE

Digital Artist/ 3D vlogger

Digital artist Axl Le was always interested in video games and their fantasy worlds. "My bachelor's degree was playing World of Warcraft for five years," he says. In fact, Le graduated as an architect, but a defying character drew him into an artistic direction, to create his own mesmerizing cyberpunk worlds in computer graphics.

數碼藝術家樂毅一直被游戲和游戲里的奇幻世界所吸引。他坦白：“我的本科時光就是玩了五年的魔獸世界”。事實上，樂毅是建筑師出身，但天生反骨的他選擇了做藝術家，用電腦繪制出一個又一個，令人印象深刻的賽博龐克世界。

Le was born in a traditional Shanghainese family. His mother convinced him to study architecture, but by the time he graduated, the Chinese architectural boom had already passed. The best job he could find was working for a governmental company developing public toilets and parks.

樂毅出生在傳統的上海家庭。當年他的母親說服他去考建筑系，但當他學成畢業時，中國建筑產業的紅利期已經過去。而他能找到的最佳崗位，就是在一家事業單位設計公共衛生間和公園。

"It was a very old fashioned job. We didn't even have the internet at the office. I was only 24, but I felt like I was 65," he says. Still, the company needed someone with tech skills to do rendering work, strictly speaking, to simulate what their projects would look like in real life. "That was my duty. I was rendering trees and toilets all the time."

“當時的工作非常保守，辦公室居然都沒有網，24歲的我感覺自己就像是65歲的老人，”他感慨道，當時的單位需要一位技術型人才去完成渲染的工作，說白了，就是制作項目效果圖。“那就是我的職責，不是在渲染樹，就是在渲染廁所。”

Looking to break into the art world, Le chased Maleonn, a renowned Chinese artist who gave a speech at his graduation. After several of Le's attempts, Maleonn agreed to have him as an assistant in a puppetry show he was producing. "We had to make life-sized puppets look real," says Le. "Maleonn taught me something fundamental: how to make new stuff look old. You have to leave marks on it, like fingerprints and scratches."

為了找機會“破圈”去做藝術，樂毅盯上了曾在他畢業典禮上致辭的有名中國藝術家馬良。在他鍥而不舍多次聯絡后，馬良同意讓他作為助理，參與一部正在制作中的木偶戲。“我們得制作真人大小的木偶，力求盡可能地仿真”樂毅說。“馬良教會了我最基本的東西：如何把新物件做舊。你得留下使用痕跡，比如指紋，劃痕等等。”

Around the same time, Le started to create artworks himself, making watercolor paintings and collages. However, as traditional art materials were expensive, he quickly switched to digital animation as a way to save money.

同一時期，樂毅開始自己創作藝術，例如水彩畫和拼貼畫。由于傳統的藝術材料比較昂貴，為了節省開支，很快便改為創作數碼動畫。

As a subject matter, he explores the "high tech, low life" concept, and the threat of technology. His scenarios are often marked by neon-lit urbanscapes or Star Wars-esque spaceships, and his characters can be humans, aliens, cyborgs, and even deities.

他開始以“高科技，弱生活”的概念及科技的威脅性為主題進行創作。他筆下的場景常常以霓虹燈閃爍的都市，或星戰式飛船為標志，角色則可能是人類，外星人，仿生人甚至神明。

In the film trilogy Kyomi Kobayashi, Le tells the story a geisha frozen in time only to be awakened three centuries later as a cyborg spy. The story came to his mind on a trip to Kyoto, where the juxtaposition of tradition and hyper-modernity struck him. The work was exhibited as a central piece of an art exhibition in Shanghai MoCA last year.

在他的三部曲系列短片《小林清美》中，樂毅講述了一位被冷凍保存了三個世紀之久的藝伎，被喚醒成為仿生人間諜的故事。而這部作品的靈感來自于一次去京都的旅行。古香古色的歷史建筑與現代城區的強烈對比，讓樂毅突然受到了啟發。這部作品在去年，作為壓軸藝術品，在上海當代藝術館展出。

KIYOMI KOBAYASHI II

In The Journey, Le reflects on our predatory relationship with nature. The story is set on another planet where mysterious experiments are taking place to regenerate fauna and flora. The details with which he depicts alien vegetation are mesmerizing.

而在短片《旅程》中，樂毅反思了我們作為掠奪者與自然的關系。故事發生在另一個星球上，一場復蘇動植物的神秘試驗正在進行，片中樂毅筆下的外星植物細節里全是驚喜，設計令人著迷。

The Journey

In 2019, Pause Fest, an Australian festival for business and creativity, invited Le to create a short story. The result was Funeral, a homage to his grandfather who passed away in the same year. "This video is, above all, to comfort me. I told myself that Grandpa is gone, but maybe floating somewhere in the universe, admiring its beauty while looking for another home," he says.

2019年澳洲的Pause Fest商業與創意節邀請了樂毅為他們創作一部短片。《葬禮》應運而生，樂毅也以此片致敬了同年去世的祖父：“這部短片其實對我來說最大的意義就是安慰。我告訴自己祖父雖然走了，但他還漂浮在宇宙某處，欣賞著宇宙的美麗，也在尋找新的家。”

Funeral

The story of his latest video came to him while he was in Hong Kong, at a lively night market in Kowloon, and saw a red-haired foreign man stepping into a battered old building. With a sordid overtone, Vincent is about what happened inside the building. Le was inspired by the city's aesthetics in general, especially of the already demolished Kowloon Walled City, to compose the scenery.

而他最新作品的靈感來則自于一次香港的行程：在香港熱鬧的九龍夜市，他看到一個紅發的外國男人走進一棟破敗不堪的建筑。基調街頭灰暗的《文森特》講述了建筑物內的故事。樂毅塑造的場景頗受香港城市風格的啟發，特別是已經拆除的九龍寨。

"Walking in the streets is a source of inspiration; I feel like I'm playing a game; if two interesting people pass me, I instantly think of a story. I like Hong Kong because the composition of buildings is very cyberpunk. Next, I want to make a film about Thailand because of the mix of futuristic and traditional elements; the neon and all the Buddhas."

“走街串巷是找靈感的一種方式，走在香港的街頭，我感覺自己仿佛在游戲中探索，如果有兩個有趣的面孔與我擦肩而過，我馬上就能腦補出一個故事。我喜歡香港是因為香港的建筑群本身就已經非常有賽博龐克的感覺。這次受到傳統元素與未來元素混搭的啟發，比如片中的霓虹燈與大佛，接下來我想做一部關于泰國的影片。”

Except for the soundtrack, Le works by himself. He molds mostly everything with his mouse from what initially looks like a digital clay ball. "I was drawn to 3D animation because it combines several art forms: you mold stuff as a sculpturer, set the lights as a photographer, create the style as a painter, and develop characters as an illustrator."

除去音樂的部分，樂毅的作品全部都是一個人完成。他用鼠標將看起來仿佛是一團數碼陶泥球的東西，慢慢建成片中的一切。“我癡迷3D動畫是因為它是多種藝術的結合體：建模類似于雕塑，調整光線類似于攝影，創作風格類似于繪畫，而角色設定則類似于手繪。”

Le has worked on several commercial projects, from cosmetics to food products, games, and fashion brands. He has worked for Nike, Adidas, Nivea, and Monster, for example. Most of them were made purely with computer graphics, and some were mixed with real shootings. "In commercials, the visual content, color, and lighting have to be aligned to the public's preference. So the style can be different from my artworks," Le says.

樂毅也接過不少商業項目，從美妝產品到食物，游戲，以及時尚品牌都有作品。他合作過的客戶有耐克，阿迪達斯，妮維雅和怪物能量飲料等等。大多數項目均由純CG完成，部分則摻有實景拍攝。“廣告片中的視覺內容，色彩和光線必須符合大眾的審美口味，因此風格和我的藝術作品可能不太一樣，”樂毅說到。

Still, Le sometimes maintains a higher control of the project, being on the top of all his cinematic abilities, including narration. “This happens when a company reaches out to me because they appreciate my art and style, so they are very open to my ideas and personal interpretations. These are usually exciting projects," he says.

不過，有時樂毅在項目中權限很大，除了在制片技術方面，在敘事劇情方面他的意見也很有分量。“這種情況通常是因為客戶是喜歡我的藝術風格而聯系我的公司，所以他們很愿意聽取的我的想法和個人解讀。這些往往都是很激動人心的項目，”他說。

In commercials as in fiction, cyberpunk never seems to grow old. Quite the opposite, it grows in popularity, resonating with younger audiences. As the bar for artists gets higher, Le's stylistic fearlessness sets him apart. His worlds can feel farfetched or surreal, but their immaculate level of detail and intricate narrations seem to prove otherwise, confusing the viewer as to what is reality and what is fiction.

不論是在廣告中，還是在小說中，賽博龐克似乎從未過時。相反，它越來越受歡迎，輕而易舉地就走進了年輕一代觀眾的心。雖然近年人們對于藝術家的要求水漲船高，但樂毅獨特的風格和無畏的個性讓他脫穎而出。他的世界雖然看似遙遠又離奇，但他筆下無與倫比的細節和復雜精細的敘事，又拉近了與觀眾的距離，讓我們不禁懷疑到底什么是真實？什么是虛構？

SHP Plus

[行知合一，廣告中國]

[craft + creativity in the Chinese advertising industry]