'Forming a Snowflake' is presented during the opening ceremony of the Beijing 2022 Olympic Winter Games at the National Stadium in Beijing, Feb 4, 2022. [Photo/IC]

The Beijing 2022 Olympic Winter Games opening ceremony kicked off at the National Stadium in Beijing on Feb 4, and provided the world with performances consisting of science, technology, and innovative ideas.

The innovative and creative performances "Olympic rings" and "Forming a Snowflake" that took place during the opening ceremony were designed by a young team from Nuctopus Studio, which is from Nanxiang town in Shanghai's Jiading district.

"We do CG animation, so we were assigned to collaborate with visual effects company Black Bow to complete 'Olympic rings'," said Huang Chen, team leader of the young designers' team from Nuctopus Studio.

"'Olympic rings' combined laser, digital special effects, physical mechanical devices, and animation images with traditional Chinese painting and calligraphy techniques to create a scene where the Olympic rings break through the ice," Huang said.

Huang's team was also assigned the task of designing "Forming a Snowflake" in August 2021.

The difficulty of the "Forming a Snowflake" project was that multiple scenes change in a very limited amount of time, and during which, the effects should match perfectly with the artists' performances and music, Huang added.

The show lasted?five minutes and?five seconds and consisted of AR snowflakes falling down and gathering together, then slowly rising up together, symbolizing "Together for a Shared Future", which is the official motto of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games.

The show was created with over 400 renderings, 15,284 photos, and countless efforts to design, practice and perfect on-the-spot rehearsals.