Some pages of the books, A Deer of Nine Colors, Mr Turtle Moves the Mountain, The Magic Dragon and the Herbal Medicines, A Carp Leaping the Dragon Gate, and The Yangque Bird Creating Sun and Moon. [Photos provided to China Daily]

Xiao and other graduates, under the guidance of Mou, began exploring different approaches and experimented with a variety of mediums and techniques.

One such approach, novel to the genre, the team took was to transform human characters into anthropomorphic animals, as was suggested by Mou.

Landscapes with light

For instance, in A Deer of Nine Colors, painted by Xiao, the ungrateful villain is portrayed as a red fox, while the queen who covets the deer's fur is illustrated as a peacock.

To draw in young readers, Mou wrote this story "in rhymed stanzas" hoping, when it is read aloud, it will have an effect similar to rapping.

In the same book, the team made another bold choice－applying jinbi shanshui ("gold-bluish green landscape"), a classic style of Chinese ink painting that uses gold, green and cyan as the three major colors.

Moreover, Xiao extended the paper-based ink painting to the digital world, combining it with new elements. She added a stereoscopic touch of light to the ancient visual effects via Photoshop, and images of the fairylike deer galloping in the green hills, bathed in the sunlight, came to life.