Mulan's Stylist- The Cartoon Dreams of Chang Chen-yi

The main character of the Disney Corporation's 136th animated feature, Mulan, might have been the most notable figure in America's Asian community last year. Not only did she generate US$150 million in box office earnings, she also stirred up a wave of Mulan imitators and martial arts class attendees among American youth.

The man in charge of designing the characters for Mulan was Taiwan-born Chang Chen-yi. The overall design of Mulan won him the Reuben Award, the animation world's answer to the Oscar. The cartoon dream that Chang Chen-yi embraced since the age of 11 has decidedly come true.

From Arabic literature's Aladdin to the native American tale of Pocahontas, from The Hunchback of Notre Dame, steeped in Gallic ambience, to Hercules, rooted in Greek and Roman mythology, Disney has long sought out material with a world-wide appeal. Seeking a feeling of intimacy and a clear delineation between good and evil, their animated features employ fables and animals to dissolve the cultural barriers that lie hidden under their auras of exoticism. In 1990 Disney, which had for some time been in search of material from the Far East, heard of the Chinese tale of Hua Mulan from a writer who collected stories from around the world. They felt that the personality of the main female character was very much in step with the spirit of the times, and so began preparing for production.

Chang Chen-yi found his inspiration for designing "Mulan" in historical Chinese painting. Ancient Chinese apparel had an aesthetic feel like flowing water, which became the special quality of the film's characters. （courtesy of Chang Chen-yi）

In order to make Mulan, Disney lured Chang Chen-yi away from a rival company. At the time Chang was a character designer for Warner Brothers, in charge of designing the TV cartoon "Batman." Moving from Warner to Disney actually meant a step down in salary, but he didn't mind. "The likelihood that Disney would make a second movie with a Chinese theme was close to nil, so I couldn't pass up the chance," he muses. Not Chinese enough?

The production of an animated feature is an immense undertaking, from developing the story and establishing the characters to background layout, computerized illustration, special effects and the phrasing and style of the music. Each Disney cartoon employs between 500 and 600 people, with a highly complex division of labor.

As "artistic supervisor of character design," Chang set about crafting the overall style of Mulan, and he discovered an element from classical Chinese painting that proved useful in animation-the "gossamer sketching" method of delineating human figures. In particular, the curving lines that form the hands of Buddhist deities, giving the effect of floating clouds or flowing water, became the artistic basis for the film's character design.

In Chang Chen-yi's home, his three-tiered bookshelf is chock full of reference books, in both Chinese and English, on such topics as Chinese instruments of war, ancient apparel and homes, and Qin-era terracotta statues. To enable his colleagues to read them, he scanned the pictures they might refer to into a computer, collected them into a single volume and translated the Chinese captions into English, giving a copy to every department.

Some commentators feel that in making Mulan, Disney must have looked at quite a few Hong Kong kung fu movies. One scene in which Mulan and the soldiers practice fighting with staffs is strongly reminiscent of a scene in Once Upon a Time in China II, in which a crowd of people practice kung fu together on a beach.

Chang Chen-yi agrees. "Asian material has given Disney a fresh feel," he says. "Everyone in our company knows about Jackie Chan."

Mulan succeeded in shattering the stereotype of the "tender and submissive" Oriental female. Yet many people ask: Why do the clothes Mulan wears so closely resemble a Japanese costume? And isn't her pale complexion just like a Japanese geisha's? Many ethnic Chinese have remarked that Mulan's clothes are "not Chinese enough," and that her white makeup is distasteful.

Chang Chen-yi can't help taking issue with such comments. He explains, if you look at facial portraits of women from the Sui and Tang dynasties and the Five Dynasties era, you will see that in ancient times women made up their faces by first applying white powder and then applying rouge. This form of appearance was common down through the Qing dynasty. The fashions and apparel of traditional Japanese culture were originally adopted from Tang Chinese culture. Today, most people have turned cause and effect on their heads, and that is why they think Mulan has a "Japanese" flavor.

Transcending historical reality

The story of Mulan originated from "The Ballad of Mulan," dating from the Northern Wei dynasty. But did this remarkable daughter Hua Mulan actually exist in Chinese history? It's impossible to tell. Whatever the truth may be, the legendary nature of folk tales gave Disney a wide degree of creative freedom.

For example, one of the cartoon's most spectacular scenes is when Mulan stops a vast horde of Hun troops and horses from sweeping down an icy mountain ridge by shooting a flaming arrow at a distant snow-covered peak and burying them in an avalanche-with great success.

Chang Chen-yi says that according to historical reality, there was no record of the use of pyrotechnics in China before the Song dynasty, but the story of Mulan came into circulation during the Northern Wei, so the period of the film was always a little vague. "Things got scrambled up a bit in terms of time." As he explains, the reason was because Disney does not like violent, sanguinary images. Two armies battling face to face may result in visuals of people bleeding and dying. Therefore, they used an avalanche to stop the Hun forces.

Taking part in Mulan could be described as a dream come true for Chang Chen-yi.

Since Chang was a boy, he loved to paint pictures. At the age of 11, he saw an article in Reader's Digest introducing Walt Disney, and he made up his mind that when he grew up he too would join the ranks of cartoon animators. To this day, he has kept that magazine, yellowed long ago, that so influenced his entire life.

When he completed the vocational college entrance examination, Chang went to work at Wang's Animation Production Company at the age of 15. From then on, during winter vacations he would work at one of two animation companies, either Wang's or Far Eastern, building up experience. After he graduated from vocational school, he completed his first animated film, Childhood Impressions, which won the Golden Harvest Award for Short Films and Video. In order to earn the money to study abroad, he went back to work at Wang's for half a year. After finishing his second piece of animation, he went to study in the United States, choosing a school mentioned in the Reader's Digest article, and renowned as the cradle of animation talent-the CalArts experimental animation program. A ticket to the big league

The Disney corporation has a tradition-every year they solicit student interns from various art institutes throughout the United States, uncovering animators and artists with potential. Chang took the attitude of "I'll pitch them some of my work, and we'll see what happens." In 1991 he was one of five interns selected by Disney, and worked for three months in their Florida studios.

He realized, "I would have a smooth ride in Hollywood, because an internship at Disney is a ticket to the big leagues." Nevertheless, he also realized that at a big corporation like Disney, he would have to work his way up from basic-level artist to advanced artist, slowly "climbing the ladder." For this reason, he went back to school and completed his master's degree, while starting to look for other work opportunities. When Warner Brothers was looking for a layout designer, he applied. As it turns out, after reviewing his portfolio, Warner Brothers offered him the more senior position of character designer instead.

Since the success of Mulan, Chang's salary has doubled. "I've earned back all the money I wasted in the past," he laughs. According to custom, Disney is releasing a new feature for the summer holidays this year-Tarzan-and Chang Chen-yi participated in the design of its main character too.

Yet he observes a basic difference between the two projects: "America has made a lot of films on subjects similar to Tarzan. It won't have an obvious ethnic tone." On the other hand, "Mulan was a big responsibility. If I hadn't done it well, I would have killed myself. I'd have felt that I'd let down the Chinese people. The pressure was enormous." Several times he noticed that little details of the film had been rendered incorrectly. The color of the clothes on the little dragon Mushu wasn't right, or the color of the Chinese apothecary sign was off. He asked the producer to do it again. If the company had been unwilling to redo the shot, he would have asked the producer to estimate how much redoing those three seconds would cost, and he would have paid for it from his own pocket.

Acting on canvas

Chang Chen-yi describes an animator as "an actor who uses a pencil-the theatrical performance lies in one's drawing skills." Although animation has entered the computer age, animators cannot merely become familiar with graphics software and forget their fundamental training in fine arts, because without sufficient artistic training, a character's gait or the shape of its skeleton will be drawn inaccurately. He has spent a lot of time cultivating in himself the ability to sketch characters. In the evenings, he has also attended oil painting classes to strengthen his comprehension of color and light.

After the success of Mulan, quite a number of Chinese people have upon meeting him asked, why is it that we couldn't make Mulan ourselves, but left it to the Americans to interpret the story of Mulan for us? When he thinks of this question, he becomes heavy of heart, not knowing what to say. He can only reply: "Let's all try harder!"