Deng Bohong, the founder of Shenzhen Dans Digital Ltd. and also a 3D Maxs Master. During the period of 10 years since Deng entered the business, he directed more than 100 works.Until 2016, Deng has won 16 international awards successively, of which 13 gold awards , in addition to 38 nominations, as more as 16 works produced by him once on public show in international competitions. Deng Bohong initiated the creative architectural growth animation and traditional Chinese realistic painting performance practices. His works were made outstanding contributions to the development of the industry.
On 31 January of 2010, the appraising and selecting activities for “Autodesk Master” came to a close. Deng Bohong became the only Asian electee for 2009 3D Maxs Master.
Firstly, in terms of technique adoption, Deng created a variety of cutting-edge visual effects creative technical approaches, such as initiating architectural growth animation in architectural animation field, and using 3D techniques to simulate traditional Chinese realistic paintings for the first time globally.
Secondly, when it comes to industrial impact, many of Deng’s creative works achieved very good results in the world's major international competitions. Deng Bohong’s work Gemdale· Lotus Countuard won the Best Film-3D Simulation in 2009 IMAGINA, and his Nobel Center and Hong Long Century Plaza were selected among the Screening works of 2009 SIGGRAPH.
Finally, in technology spreading aspects, Deng Bohong, as an outstanding creative visual effects expert, is always willing to share his own technical achievements and production experience, publish technical papers and promote educational research and development cooperation projects and so on.
Deng Bohong was born in Inner Mongolia, with ancestral home in Shandong Province, who successively moved to Tangshan and Beijing in primary school and moved to Shenzhen during middle school. Deng has a democratic family, when his grandfather graduated from Waseda University in early years, and his father majored in physics while have great passion for design, who not only own two patents but also designed the sign of Daya Bay Nuclear Power . Therefore, Deng Bohong comes from a typical literary family, in which the respect for curiosity and creativity as well as consciousness of innovation dominates the family heredity.
Deng Bohong said he was lucky, because how far a person can go depends on his values and ways of thinking, and thanks to family inheritance, he gained right values.
成長經歷
獅子座，O型血，榮譽感是流淌在鄧博弘血液中的一種驅動力。
Deng Bohong belong to Leo group, with O-type blood, honor is a driving force which is runs deep through his veins.
Deng Bohong once worked in his father’s factory for 2 years, and he defined the period as “help”. For him, it is his responsibility to stand out when father needs help.
Deng Bohong’s father is a typical scholar, who make assiduous study and had two invention patents. In the great time of China reform and opening up, his father cooperated with a Hongkong company and put the first patent into the market, although the cooperation ended finally due to business causes, but it also helped Deng’s father got the primary fund accumulation. Later, Deng’s father started business again by virtue of the second patent, but it demands small-scaled production test in order to turn the patent into commercial product, thus examining the project’s feasibility in the market. Based on the particularity of the material, Deng’s father located the factory in Baotou. Following to small-scaled production test, the factory demands management, sales and procurement. As the only son in the family, it is natural for Deng Bohong to share father’s concern and burden, so Deng went to Baotou. At that time, Deng can only enjoy programs in 3 TV channels including the CCTV, Inner Mongolia channel and Baotou channel without any other entertainment. It is really bored for a young man who just graduated from college to spent life like that, Deng knew that he should find something to do. Sometimes in the midnight, he went to the workshop and turned on the machine, made some small items out of a little piece of wood like a bracelet, or a vase (and this hobby remain to the present) to kill time. During the period of two years, he turned from a complete outsider to a skilled welder and lathe worker, and even an important machinery patent owner.
儘管工廠很成功，但他覺得，這是父親的事業，不是自己的，他希望的是能萌生興趣的事業。
Although the business went well, Deng Bohong thought it is after all his father’s business, but not his own, what he really desired is a career he truly love.
離開包頭後，回到深圳。
After leaving Baotou, Deng Bohong went back to Shenzhen.
Accidently, Deng entered a 3D motion picture company in Shenzhen. At that time 3D animation was just started, and Deng Bohong thought it to be cool. By Chance, a company belongs to Deng Bohong opened at the Valentine’s Day of 2003.
Actually, Deng Bohong has no professional background. “I always have a strong curiosity and a desire to create and innovate, so I often do things that are not relate to my own major at all.” Driven by curiosity, Deng study tirelessly both in terms of creativity and technique. It is kind of family heredity. "My grandfather once studied machinary in Waseda University, and the ash can made by him out of melted bronze and tin still kept at home. My father is strange too, he majors in physics but designed the sign of Daya Bay Nuclear Plant, and one of his patents relates to botany."
Experience is fortune. The experience in the factory seem to be one of the origin of Deng’s creativity. “My ideas involve many mechanical elements such as hydralic pressure, lever, electrical machine, drive cam, and I learned all of this in my father’s factory.” Deng Bohong said.
According to Deng Bohong, the company had no ideals or strategy at the beginning, and he owns the current development to his competitive personality and perfectionism.
At the beginning, Deng used to estimate the necessary cost of the year, and when earned this amount of money by August or September, he would decline other projects but only chose one project that can fully bring his talents into play and challenge his limits.
On June 2004, Dans Digital and China Railway Group signed a contract with a price of 300,000 Yuan. The project lasted for five and a half month, and adopted architectural growth animation for the first time, in which the cements, floor boards, steels came from all directions and automatically formed a building in an instant. Deng Bohong created this milestone technology, which is commonly used now. However, back at that time no one tried it before, so how could the technique bring good effects? No one can say for sure. Given this, the project involves huge amounts of work, and Dans Digital even bought all the Pentium IV 3.0GHz XEON CPU in the market. The contract price is only 300,000 Yuan, while Deng Bohong cost at least 600,000 Yuan on it.
In 2008, Gemdale· Lotus Countuard showed traditional Chinese realistic painting by way of 3D motion picture for the first time in the world. Before that, Chinese painting had successfully entered the field, but most difficult traditional Chinese realistic painting made it impossible to present. Traditional Chinese realistic painting adopts line drawing and color-applying, problems such as uneven lines, irregular color, color overflow and cavalier perspective deviate from the accurate system followed by computer simulation. On the first day of 2009 lunar year, Deng Bohong received a call from IMAGINA committee, “Mr. Deng, congratulations! Your work Gemdale· Lotus Family won the award……In addition, you are the first Chinese award-winner of this event, congratulations to you again.” IMAGINA is one of the most authoritative awards in visual creativity and animation field, previous awarded films are all classical blockbusters such as Batman, Transformer, X-men, and previous awarded corporations are all top production companies such as Pixar, Industrial Light & Magic, and The Blizzard. Actually, The Best Film-3D Simulation of Gemdale· Lotus Countuard is the highest international award that ever granted to the field of China.
There is a scene in Transformer II that the pyramid was tramped and all stones falling down, which is a design on the basis of rigid body dynamics. Before Transformer, Deng Bohong had implemented an adverse project in terms of the this technology called Hong Long Century Plaza. The project contracted at a price of 400,000 Yuan, while Dans Digital subsidized 800,000 Yuan voluntarily and spent 6 months to complete it. As a result, Hong Long Century Plaza is the most awarded Chinese advertising film in international competitions by now, with a total of 10 awards.
If a person with a title of Master kept saying, “I have been convinced that I am just an outsider”, it is either because of hypocrisy or lack of confidence. Deng Bohong, the Master majored in MBA reveals both great heroism and literacy in conversations. Given the current reality that “business is business” philosophy met with great favor, Deng can really described as a unique one. However, perhaps it is this very uniqueness endowed him with an open feeling of “in me the tiger sniffs the roses” and inner calm and freedom.
《中國日報》/ 20100510
China Daily/ May 10, 2010
Many people who watch sport know that the green jacket symbolizes a golfer's entry into the exclusive club of Masters champions, while the frontrunner in the Tour de France bicycle race wears a yellow jersey. Now it seems other professionals are receiving items of clothing to mark their achievements. One is Deng Bohong, managing director of Shenzhen Dans Digital Technology Co Ltd, who has just been given a black leather jacket by Autodesk Inc.
《南方都市報》/ 20100726
外表沒有標新立異不代表鄧博弘內心也固守常規。。。。。他們讓深圳生活充滿希望，他們經營美好夢想
Southern Urban Daily/ July 26, 2010
Simple appearance does not mean Deng Bohong is a man that stick to conventions……They enable the life in Shenzhen full of hopes, and manage beautiful dreams.
Shenzhen Special Zone Daily / Liang Ting /March 19, 2010
Deng Bohong leading his team works hard in the industry. On ceremony, his firm facial expression and confident smiles show that: “Transformer is no longer a dream for Chinese.
Digital entertainment industry is never a place lack of honors. Every year, there are dozens of large and small competitions, exhibitions, animation festival to be held in places all over the world, and attract the world’s attention with power of technology and inspiration. Shenzhen Dans Digital, a company led by Deng Bohong, has won seven international awards since it began to participate in international competitions in 2007. Actually, Dans Digital proves Chinese manufacturing strength with facts. Perhaps compared to the pursuit for technology, we need more unrestrained imagination and the courage as well as confidence to show ourselves.
Deng Bohong named his son as Deng Wuge, and everyone heard this name would interpret it as a desire for world peace. Mr. Deng appears to be a man of conformity, but actually a man with Gulong-style ideals in mind: “hands without a sword, but a sword in mind”. As the saying in Tao Te Ching goes, “nothing is everything”.
9 international awards including 5 gold awards, with 6 films went to public show in international events. Deng Bohong, a man develops from industry outsider to big player, and makes great achievements in his own business.
Deng Bohong follows a free path of life. As an MBA, Deng stayed far away from art or creative ideas before 30, but gained the title of Master in just a few years. Dans Digital, the company found by Deng, often competes against top visual production companies such as Pixar, Industrial Light & Magic, and secured 90% of the international awards granted to Chinese visual creativity companies. Today, when the “special effects” has become too common a tool in show business, the ideal of Deng Bohong is to be the “Bentley” and “Rolls-Royce” in visual creativity industry.
Deng Bohong impresses people as neat and vigorous, casual and relaxed in conversations. In his own words, he is a man without hypocrisy.
You can rarely find particularly popular or specially selected wording in his speech, but mostly concise and sentimental ones.
If you think the so-called business elite should be serious and unreachable, it would be wrong. Deng Bohong enjoys his life in a most practical way, and interprets his success with most popular languages.
《中外管理》/ 201207
無論在哪個行業，抓住金字塔的頂尖部分，總能創造出同行不可媲美的商業模式。
Sino-foreign Management/July, 2012
No matter in what industry, take hold of the top part of the pyramid would enable you to create a business model beyond comparison in the industry.
A winter day in Shenzhen, the warm sunshine make one feel comfortable, and the reporter saw a very different Deng Bohong. If you are going to appreciate the elegant demeanor of the Master, then you will be disappointed. If you are going to dialogue with business elite about his ordinary life, then you will be satisfied.
Deng Bohong, a man has strong desire for the extraordinary and high respect for his own curiosity, a man believe that everything in life can give him the real feelings. Now, he enjoys both these two situations.
This is a man with high respect for curiosity, in a word, “follow his heart and never go beyond limits”.
In April, 2009, Digital Design (CGW) interviewed Deng Bohong about Dans Digital’s workGemdale· Lotus Countuardwon the Best Film-3D Simulation of IMAGINA.
CGW: This award should bring great inspiration and confidences to numerous Chinese CG jobholders, so can you say something to your peers in the industry?
Deng: In addition to 1 percent luck, the reason that we can win this honor due to our 99 percent perspiration. And it is not an accomplishment in one action, but the fruit of many years’ consistent efforts and accumulation.
You may be disappointed to see the people in our team, since we are the kind of 7 point player, nearly no one can get 9 points. And one major reason that we won international awards is we have the ability to line out a vegetable area of 10 square meters in a desert, and simulate the temperature, humidity and soil condition of Amazon rainforest. Thus, a good seed can grow and flourish there.
In a public show, the work of Dans Digital was met with thunderous applause in a hall with 1000 people. Deng Bohong said: “I know that I have the ability to move 1000 people now, but I cherish the hope that someday I can touch 10 millions of people.”
When talked about grandfather——a Waseda University graduate and father ——a senior industrial artist, Deng Bohong said he is lucky, because how far a man can go depend on his values and way of thinking. Born in a literary family, Deng inherits a good value from the family.
Deng Bohong made a systematic public speaking about his views on the industry for the first time, and brought forward stage development theory about industrial artistry and art industrialization in terms of Chinese cultural creative industry development, as well as gave an object summary about the essential nature of Chinese cultural creative industry.
The first attribute of cultural products is being commodity, and the second attribute is being tool, while the third attribute is being art, which is the most important difference when compared with other industrial products.
Deng Bohong talked with Chen Shaofeng( associate director of Peking University Cultural Industry Institute) and Jia Wei(founder of Rococo Design Group) about the theme of “cultural creativity dialectic”, and had a discussion in terms of the “Hot and Cold”, “Little and Huge”, “Good and Evil”, “Superficial and Essential” things of Chinese cultural creative industry. In the seminar, Deng Bohong made a profound interpretation about the industry.
Hot and Cold: Social market economy can not work without the rule of law and democracy, and to solve social environment problems is the development way for all industries including cultural creative industry. If GDP, utilitarian and short-term benefits or superficial phenomenon dominate everything, various ways to promote the development of cultural creative industry would get nowhere. As for the national policy, just specific and limited measures such as dial fund directly or grant land to build industrial park can just have little effects, thus the most important thing is to establish correct values and form good industrial environment and development mechanism through policies and regulations.
Little and Big: Undoubtedly, cultural creative industry belongs to typical new economy, with no warehousing, transportation, and almost no raw materials, but the cultural creativity products have great premium space. Balzac manuscripts are invaluable now, but how much the paper and ink he used cost?
Cultural creative industry does not depend on output or cost. In 2009, all film makers inChinacheering since the total value of Chinese film box exceeded 10 billion Yuan, and American movie Avatar made a global box office record of $ 2.7 billion at the same year. How much the gap is! There are many more examples like 100,000 ordinary glasses are not worth blue-and-white porcelain from Ru Yao.
Good and Evil: My almost hypocritical insist on profession would often potentially expose a positive impact on short-term utilitarian, impetuous and even false trades and social phenomena. I simply do not have the power to make a qualitative change in the industry, but if many companies join to work hard, I believe that someday quantitative change would develop into qualitative change. The older scholars and artists became the more valuable they are, because they have a lifetime of accumulation and precipitation. But look at the reality, how many people regard the job as their lifelong career?” It is an abnormal social mentality, which can not be changed in a short-term since it stems from both distortion of values and historical factors. The society in the future will be a professional and fine sorted one, so we should make everything in our professional career perfect. However, in reality, speculation and cheat prevail and the cost of law-breaking being low, all of this leads to a misguided value。
Superficial and Essential: Deng Bohong said that the cultural and creative industry have three attributes , at first it is a commodity , whether movies or advertising films should make money ; secondly it is a tool, both advertising films and movies are made to serve customers and bring greater economic benefits to them ; the third point is critical, when it aims to achieve the maximum value of commodity and tool functions by way of art , such as architectural design, interior design, commercial art field and so on. Practitioners in the industry should find ways to make industrial products an art, but art is random and needs inspiration, how to do? The answer lies in the industrialization of artistic products. A typical case is the Hollywood inAmerica, which produced a large number of irritating films that swept the world through industrialized ways, thus a new noun “creative mechanisms” emerges, and the mechanism here can also be understood as the soil.
Then, Deng Bohong further pointed out thatChinahas a philosophical concept of “She De”, which means you should give at first and then you gain. In order to realize the commercial value and tool function of a product, you should set them aside at first, and process it in artistic ways, finally seek to reach the first goal. Therefore, unlike other industries, solving problems in cultural and creative industries can not rely on investment money, what it truly needs is Soil. Only the Soil can guarantee a decent and rather rich life for artists, business talents would like to take such jobs, and talents in production area would willing to turn artistic items into industrialized products, and this is a part of the orderly industrial chain.
Deng Bohong stressed that cultural creative industry aims at the emotional state of mind——sense of beauty and pleasure. At the time of war and poverty, rice and flour worth a lot; at peace time, when the economy develop, luxury and collection became valuable. When the society progresses further, the most valuable thing would be entertainment, since it is part of human nature.
“This is not an advocate of social entertainment , nor is the so-called ‘three vulgar thing’, what I am saying is that people would like to pay a lot for their gained pleasure and enjoyment when satisfying the basic survival needs and have a sense of security. Entertainment generally refers to a kind of cultural creative service, such as travelling, collecting art items, playing extreme sports, singing Peking Opera, watching opera and so on. As long as people enjoy their interests to the fullest, and satisfy their needs of personality and hobbies, that can be described as the best entertainment. Every place crows people in Golden Week, and this also reflects a kind of entertainment orientation.” Deng Bohong explained.
Deng Bohong put forward lifelong-career-like views about the low-end development of the domestic industries.
If people in an industry can only consume career life in simple and rough labor work day after day without any motivation to go up, then the industry can never develop. As the saying goes, “without trees, without forest”.
More often than not, legends are just the result of propagation, and all the creators of legend understand a simple and clear truth: "My production capacity and energy is limited, and we Chinese people do not lack of creativity, but we are short of executive ability, since execution demands huge effort, time and cost. The demand that market grants you is definitely a sign of your success!”
In the cover story of Culture Activate The Dream of China, Deng Bohong talked about the value of private companies in creativity industry, and discussed from three aspects of “knowledge about the creativity”, ”industrial overview”, and “environment judge”.
Global Business & Finance: Talking about the cultural creative industry, what’s your view from the industrial aspect?
Deng Bohong: First, it is an industry, and may be an ultimate industry. When the society becomes stable and rich, people will truly seeking for their inner needs, and then things related to culture and art would boom. From the history ofChinaand the universal law of the modern world, powerful material civilization would always accompany with powerful spiritual civilization. Cultural products need to have sense of design and artistic values, and the society will actually step into a national entertainment era afterwards.
Global Business & Finance: When the creativity encounter industry, all ideas must act in practice, and you can only make money by producing actual products, so what do you think about the current mechanism and surrounding inChina?
Deng Bohong : Chinese people never lack of creative ideas, and we never short of the good seed of cultural creativity, the problem actually lies in the poor soil . We need to keep improving the soil condition, and fertile soil demands long-term nurturing. Currently, the difference betweenChinaand western countries lies absolutely not only in culture, but also in level of economic development, because the development of cultural creative industry relates closely to the rhythm of market.
Demands determine market, while the demand is in constant change and evolution, and the changing demands strongly link to economic development. In addition, technically it is also an inexorable law of development. Today’s cultural and creative industry is more than cultural heritage, it has some new concepts. In a word, there is no industry without industrialization. And all of these elements are different from our previous understanding about culture, so the products and result would be different.
Global Business & Finance: At present,Chinahas become the world’s second largest economy entity, so does this mean that cultural creative industry inChinawill have an environment for rising?
Deng Bohong: We spent 30 years to complete an economic task that achieved by European countries for about 400 years, but the progress rate of culture certainly can not as fast as the economy . Now, the cultural consumption capacity of rich people inChinahas reached the level of developed countries, but they still prefer to consume LOGO. The problem of universal values demands efforts of different generations, especially the cultivation and extension of cultural awareness need to pass from generation to generation and then flourish.
People would someday change from a state in which only caring about the meat in the bowl to a situation in which appreciating the bowl itself, but this demands a long process. Keep calm and be patient, it is always a golden rule.
