The 12th HPCNCHC Animation Contest award winners were announced and for the first time, the Creative Culture Film Festival moved to YES! LIFE Yulon City

The National Science and Technology Council has actively advocated the integration of science and humanities, supported artistic creation through technology, cultivated cross-disciplinary talents, and brought unlimited vitality and innovation to the cultural and creative industries. The National Center for High-Performance Computing under National Applied Research Laboratories (NARLabs NCHC) implements the policies of the National Science and Technology Council and has co-sponsored the "2023 the 12th HPCNCHC Animation Contest" with Taiwan's Contemporary Culture Experimental Laboratory (C-LAB). The rankings were announced today (10/26). The champion of the "3D Animation Category" was won by "Eureka" from National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, the champion of the "2D Animation Category" was won by "Swimming Set Sail" of National Taiwan University of Arts, and the "Innovative Media Category" was won by "Blooming Flowers" of National Taiwan University of Arts. 

"Eureka", the winning work in the "3D Animation Category", uses a Taiwan local characteristic element "sausage" to convey philosophy, the concept of parallelling time and space, and it is the perfect application of animation special effects, presenting the sense of time fragmentation and overlap. "Swimming Set Sail", the winner of the "2D Animation Category", is an excellent combination of narrative and art, and the work is delicate and tender, telling the deep emotion. The winner of the "Innovative Media Category", "Blooming Flowers", is a stop-motion animation that shows a unique visual aesthetic, with a high command and grasp of the characteristics and visual changes of the material, employing a mature creative technique and artistic exploration in the experimental work. Additionally, two new "Character Development Potential Awards" are added this year by the Taiwan Character Brand Licensing Association. These new awards mainly focused on the development and licensing and extended application of the characters in the works. Two works were selected: "DEAR" by the National Taiwan University of Science and Technology and "HideOut Pirate Panda" by the Yunlin University of Science and Technology .

NARLabs NCHC has continued to promote the cross-domain application of science and art, and has been organizing the most representative render farm animation competitions in Taiwan for many years - "HPCNCHC Animation Competition", promoting the development of domestic graphics technology and cultivating outstanding creators. It has been held 12 times, with more than 1,000 teams and 4,500 participants participating.  To provide a more diverse stage for local creators to discover and cultivate more cross-disciplinary talents, NARLabs NCHC and Taiwan Contemporary Culture Experimental Center have jointly organized the "Creating Culture: HPCNCHC Animation Film Festival", which for the first time next year will be moved to YES! LIFE Yulon City, which is a large department store. It is hoped to pool together the power of the private sector to establish a new milestone for HPC to connect life and community so that more people can see the infinite possibilities of HPC. From November this year, the outstanding works of past HPCNCHC Animation Contests will be broadcast on the public platform of the department store in preparation for the moving of the festival next year.

The festival will showcase the animation creation of High Performance Computing based on "Cloud GPU Render Farm", developed by NARLabs NCHC., as well as the "Smart Point Cloud Technology", which won the Oscar Award in 2021 and the R&D 100 Awards. Through the cooperation with the Ministry of Economic Affairs, the Ministry of Culture, county and municipal governments, it has built the point cloud model of historical sites such as the Taiwan Literature Base, the Hsinchu Branch of the Sixth Fuel Plant of the Japanese Navy, etc. It has organized cloud calculation and point cloud practical courses and workshops so that the creative imagination may travel through the past and the present, and present the concept of digital preservation and activation of historical monuments. 


The general convener of the "HPCNCHC Animation Contest" and the curator of the "Creating Culture: HPCNCHC Animation Film Festival" is Guo Jiazhen, a section head at NCHC who pointed out that the organization of the animation competition and animation film festival is to use HPC technology to promote the creation of emerging culture, and promote the value-added diffusion of local characteristic culture through the introduction of cloud computing render farm and intelligent point cloud technology. Based on the year-round competition system of "Cultivating Talents through Contests", combined with the cloud computing classroom, it cultivates a new generation of creators who make good use of HPC technology, and progressively nurtures a new national strength across science and art cultures. 

Taiwan Contemporary Culture Experimental Center CEO Xie Cuiyu pointed out that NARLabs NCHC has long promoted scientific and technological research and development and cross-domain application of culture and art, creating innovative exhibitions and performance models, and actively cultivating creative talents. Since 2020, NCHC has been stationed in the Taiwan Contemporary Culture Experimental Field, and in 2022, it has supported  with technology the creation of an animation creator base. We hope to help industrial transformation through the value-added application of science and technology and create a new breed of cross-domain science and technology culture in Taiwan.