Legends Live Forever

Final Frontier and director Nerdo crafted an epic 2D spot for Tencent’s Yue Wen platform, a popular reading app for classic Chinese literature.

The 109-second, one-shot, cel-animation – “Legends Live Forever”, depicts seven iconic tales from the ancient text The Classic of Mountains and Seas, said to have been written before 221 BC, with a central message of Good Stories Never Die.

With a mission to preserve traditional culture and literature in a saturated digital environment, Yue Wen incubates literary IP’s and develops them into various digital entertainment mediums.

Tencent set out to reinforce the important role stories have in a culture’s identity, charging Final Frontier and Nerdo with finding a bold contemporary approach in portraying stories already well known to the platform’s user base, such as Pan Gu Separates Sky From Earth and Hou Yi And The Ten Suns.

Traditional Chinese art conventions and a fresh Western look are fused together by the team. The stories seamlessly move from one to the next via fluid transitions, rendered with a hand-drawn look, including bold silhouettes, textured brushes, and animated ink and grain.

Nerdo founder and executive creative director Alessandro Durando says,

“We love problem-solving and a good puzzle. Reimagining a classic tale and its deeper message was, to put it mildly, extremely difficult, and the strong connection with their historic appearance and recognizable art added even more complexity to finding the right balance between the concept and the art style.

We studied all the myths in-depth, but then we had to unlearn them, reimagine them from scratch, and focus on one single, decisive element. Then we transposed them visually into a cohesive stream of pure epic spectacle linking all the parts seamlessly.”

About the outcome, Alessandro says,

“We are really proud of this project in its entirety, a dense and action-packed one-shot movie with a highly stylized look, textured brushes and balanced and concise narration. We really like how every scene flows into the next, almost like a moving painting.”

Final Frontier executive producer Gus Karam says,

“When we bridge the East and West’s creative industries, we open the door to create something really special. We had so much fun putting our heads together and deep diving into the beauty and wonder of Chinese mythology with Nerdo, who are masters of their craft, and Tencent’s deeply knowledgable team of storytellers.”

The campaign won numerous awards, including Bronze for Film Craft and two shortlists at the Cresta Awards, one Silver and three Crystals for Ad Stars, and a shortlist at the London International Awards.