Meet the creative mastermind behind multi-billion view animation franchise Super BOOMi — Trevor Lai
Creators Voice
This week, on Creators’ Voice, we have an exclusive interview with the CEO/Founder of UP Studios — Trevor Lai. Backed by Tencent, UP Studios recreates stories, characters and animated films for audiences around the world including the famous 3D-animated series Super BOOMi. The show has been a breakthrough success as the most popular award-winning animated show in Asia with coding, technology and friendship as its core themes.
Super BOOMi NFT collection will be available exclusively on Spores Network this holiday season.
(S) Please tell us a little bit about yourself, besides art, anything else you’re willing to share with your audience so that they will get to know a bit more about you as a person?
(Trevor) Although I have been established in the animation industry for 10 years now, my background is quite diverse. I started my first company as a teenager publishing children’s books based on characters that I created, and in university, I co-founded a web design company with a programming partner. While art was my first love, I studied business in school so I learned how to be an artist and animation director at night when I wasn’t studying or at work.
(S) Can you walk us through your journey as an artist/creator?
(Trevor) When I was a teenager, I absolutely loved reading and collecting all kinds of comic books: Marvel, DC, Image, Dark Horse, Vertigo, you name it. Early on, my dream was to be a comic book artist, and I had the chance to meet Todd McFarlane, Jim Lee, Stan Lee and Mike Mignola at Comic Cons before they became a mainstream event. At the time, however, I also loved cartoons like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Bruce Timm’s Batman The Animated Series, so I realized that animation and children’s books had a farther reach than comic books, and decided to start writing and illustrating books. Prior to creating BOOMi, I toured across Canada for my children’s books, and designed the world’s first SMART Cars that you could colour in like a colouring book for one of my projects in Shanghai.
To date, the biggest project I’ve worked on is Super BOOMi, and it all started with short animated videos like BOOMi T-Rex Park, which I created at Up Studios when we had only a handful of team members, and I was still learning how to produce CG animation.
The animated short racked up over 20 million views, and although it’s a humble beginning compared to the 5 billion plus views we have now, it’s living proof that every dream has to start with a first step, and as long as you keep creating and moving forward, you can build something as big as you want!
Another amazing project we’ve worked on with BOOMi is designing hotel rooms for over 100 hotels and resorts across Greater China for Intercontinental Hotel Group and their family-oriented Holiday Inn Hotels and Resorts. When BOOMi’s animated series first launched on air, I took the entire Up Studios team to stay at a BOOMi-themed hotel, and we also spent the day at Shanghai Disneyland, and it was such a surreal feeling to see that a character we created could be as popular one day as the famous characters we’ve grown up with at Disney.
I’m also a huge ice hockey fan, and Super BOOMi has been the family ambassador for the NHL in China, which was an incredible milestone for myself and our company. In addition to licensing the character, I had the chance to write, direct and produce the first-ever CG-animated series with the NHL, Super BOOMi Hockey Hero. In addition to racking up over 60 million views for the series in China, BOOMi and I also got featured in multiple NHL All-Star Games and events in both the US and in China, and the biggest hockey players in the world have watched BOOMi’s ice hockey cartoon as well.
You can tune in to The Super BOOMi Hockey Hero Series on Youtube.
(S) Can you walk us through the origins and vision of Super BOOMi?
(Trevor) As a fan of cartoons and comic books since childhood, I wanted to create an iconic character and series that could last generations. At the same time, I wanted the hero, Super BOOMi, to be completely different from others that I had seen before, so instead of giving him superpowers, I made his special “powers” to be his imagination and computer coding skills. This allowed me to create a story universe that was unique, especially in Asia, with its focus on technology, creativity and sports rather than magic or superheroes. In addition, BOOMi was also designed to be the first globally iconic character from China; much like Pikachu or Mickey Mouse have traveled the world as ambassadors for Japanese and American culture that are beloved by fans everywhere, Super BOOMi is pioneering a new era of creativity from his story, brand and growth. It was really important to me that BOOMi could transcend borders, and be just as appealing to a fan in America as he would be to one in France, and we have started to achieve that with the Super BOOMi animated series being broadcast by major networks in countries around the world.
(S) What can be said about your style and evolution both visually and thematically? What is your source of inspiration?
(Trevor) In the beginning, BOOMi was really focused on being as cute as possible; every character element I designed was trying to achieve cuteness overload, including the design of his adorable puppy Bibop and BOOMi’s friends. However, as his story universe evolved, and I started writing scripts for the TV series, I realized that BOOMi could be much more than a cute face — by giving him interests that audiences today could relate to, and grander adventures that span science fiction to historical epics, BOOMi’s show evolved to be more much richer in substance and sophisticated in design. My sources of inspiration are many, ranging from feature films, to manga, to video games, sports and music, and one of the goals with BOOMi is combining many of those elements into the show so that every season is exciting and diverse even for long-term fans.
(S) As you continue to explore artistic freedom in your work, how do you feel about where you are now, and where do you envision yourself in the short, medium, long-term future?
How do you see Super BOOMi evolve? Are there plans to make Super BOOMi more “adult friendly”?
(Trevor) I’m having the time of my life! I’ve never felt more artistically free than I do now, and I have made a conscious decision to follow my instincts even more in every project I choose to embark upon moving forward. When BOOMi became a hit, I already had another series in development, Piggy, based on a character I’d created which was published in book form by Harry Potter’s publisher in New York, Bloomsbury.
It’s taken 3 plus years of writing, design and production, but Piggy’s first season is about to debut in January 2022, and it’s also a wholly original series that I think will reach a global audience. The next franchise I’m working on is something I have been quietly working on for over a decade, and brought on a huge team in London to collaborate with, and its core audience will be older than both BOOMi and Piggy. So, if you look at my track record, you can see that I’ve always measured my work in decades, and really pride myself on developing universes that audiences and creative partners can play in and explore for generations.
So far, we’ve discovered that fans of BOOMi are interested in Piggy and all of my other projects, and it reminds me of when I was younger and how once I fell in love with an author or cartoon series, I would always follow that creator around to his other projects, no matter who the target audience of that project was. So, BOOMi definitely already has a lot of teenage and grown-up fans, and during 20 years of presenting creative workshops to audiences from 3 years old to adults, I’ve happily discovered that one thing all my fans all share in common is that their inner child is alive and well.
(S) Now let’s talk about your upcoming partnership with Spores Network? Why did you decide to partner with Spores to release your NFTs?
(Trevor) First of all, I’ve known one of the founders, Jeff for years from his respected position in the art scene here. When Jeff approached me about collaborating as an artist,and told me about Spores, I had already been following the NFT space for awhile and thinking about opportunities to bring BOOMi and other creations to the digital collectibles world. I’ve been a passionate collector of comics, sports cards, art and collectible card games like Magic: The Gathering for over 20 years, and all of this knowledge really fueled my brainstorming about what amazing things we could create in this space. As the creator of BOOMi’s TV series, I have a unique opportunity to build the entire digital collecting experience from scratch while also looking for opportunities to weave into the show, so that collectors of BOOMi NFTs actually can experience things that influence and appear in the TV series, and unlock physical gifts from the show like original artwork and toys. So, when I first talked to Spores’ founders, one of the key things that got us all excited was the fact that Super BOOMi is far more than just an NFT, but it’s a digital collecting experience that allows fans to actually grow with a franchise that already has 156 completed episodes of top-rated content and more in production right now. If you had been able to buy a piece of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ original animated series when you were a kid, or if you look at how much the first ever Pikachu trading card is worth now, imagine how exciting it is today to be able to buy the first ever Super BOOMi collectibles, for a show that is already a proven hit in the biggest market in the world, with a world-class animation studio and media titan backing the franchise.
(S) Can you tell us about some details such as the thought process of your most recent works or projects?
(Trevor) I really want to bring the excitement and joy of collecting Super BOOMi to both experienced collectors as well as the BOOMi fans who love the characters and are new to digital collectibles. That’s why the first drop is focused on giving collectors the opportunity to get the first ever digital collectible editions of the star characters BOOMi, Bibop, Mac and Mia, as well as the main baddie Mega Bug, who is the Joker to BOOMi’s Batman. I also loved designing some really cool exclusive rare drops featuring BOOMi like he’s never been seen before, which we can debut in the animated series later — it’s like owning a piece of show history!
Stay tuned for more upcoming news and updates relating to the Spores x Super BOOMi collection!
About Spores
Spores Network founders believe that crypto will lead to decentralization of ownership and frictionless redistribution of capital. Their mission is to create an NFT ecosystem that is creator-centric, community-driven, frictionless, and borderless. To that end, Spores has built a cross-chain DeFi-powered NFT marketplace defining decentralized pop culture, sharing NFT content across gaming, esports, animation/anime, digital fine arts, music, and film/TV. Spores co-founders include Duc Luu (Nasdaq IPOed serial entrepreneur ), Eric Hung Nguyen (former senior investment analyst at a top-10-worldwide hedge fund), and a diverse team of advisors across blockchain and entertainment.
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