After "Heavenly Book", the golden age of perfection came to an end

Author: Xin Yousheng

The 4K restored version of "Tianshu Qitan" was recently released, which not only meets the emotional needs of the late 70s and early 80s generation, but also provides a choice for children to be different from the current animation style.

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The origin of the creation of "Tianshu Qitan" was that the Shanghai Fine Arts Film Studio was shaken by the BBC with the proposal of co-production. When Shangmeiying heard that the BBC did not have enough funds to get off the project, it must be very surprised, right? In the early days of reform and opening up, China's funds were insufficient, and whoever wanted to get a developed country like britain could also lack money. Of course, it is also good that I did not cooperate with the British, if I had been swayed by their thinking or way, I may not have had the classic of this animated film "Chinese School".

The story of "Heavenly Book Qitan" is based on the vernacular novel "The Legend of the Three Sui Ping Demons" written by Luo Guanzhong and supplemented by Feng Menglong. The original story tells that during the years of Emperor Taizong of Song and Emperor Zhenzong, the egg monk and the fox demon stole the Heavenly Book "Ruyi Treasure Book" from Yuan Gong (White Ape), who was guarding the Book of Heaven, practiced spells, and played the human world, and then the fox demon helped the king of Beizhou to revolt, Wen Yanbo put down the rebellion, and Yuan Gong asked the Nine Heavenly Nieces to help suppress the rebellion. In the original work, the fox demon and the egg monk (the prototype of the egg in the cartoon) were originally a group, and the Heavenly Book was also the old fox that the egg monk took the initiative to give, until the egg monk incarnated as Zhuge Suizhi before entering the Wenyan Bo team. The quality of the works completed by Luo Guanzhong and Feng Menglong is very guaranteed, and it is much better than the "History of the Immortals" and "The Wizard of Oz", which are also written about the peasant uprising and xiu xian, but the popularity is not high.

"The Legend of sansui Ping" has a complex plot and mixed ideas, and it is the credit of the creative team of "Tianshu Qitan" to change such a story written for adults into an animation and make it a classic.

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First of all, let's talk about directors Wang Shuchen and Qian Yunda. In addition to this film, Wang Shuchen also participated in the directing work of "Nezha Noisy Sea". Shangmei Film is known for its short films, and has participated in the creation of two animated novels in a row and has become a classic, which shows the level of wang Shuchen's director. Qian Yunda has directed the famous "Little Sisters of the Prairie Heroes", which is praised for the superb drawing technique of hundreds of sheep galloping on the grassland without errors in the movement of lamb legs.

The screenwriter of "Nezha Noisy Sea" is the famous fairy tale writer Bao Lei, who has cooperated with Shangmei Film many times, he is also the screenwriter of "Golden Conch" and "Three Monks", and his fairy tale "Pig Eight Commandments Eat Watermelon" is the childhood memory of generations. As a high-level fairy tale author, Bao Lei simplified the complex story of "The Legend of the Three Sui Ping Demons" and made a treatment suitable for children's understanding, while retaining a large number of imaginative and interesting bridges in the original work, and interpreting and recreating the ironic parts of the original work that were in line with the times. For example, the old fox used a cornucopia for the county officials to change wealth from the people, which is a metaphor for the feudal bureaucracy to scrape the people's fat and people's anointing; the lame fox became a prefect, was recognized by the egg and stepped on the tail, fled to the old fox, and the old fox said that the tail was not hidden this time, and the meaning conveyed was clearer. This kind of pointing to a clear expression of values is very different from today's cartoons.

A good cartoon is more important to create one or more images outside the story, such as Mickey Mouse, Tom Cat, and Monkey King. The character image of "Heavenly Book" is also more deeply rooted in the hearts of the people than the story to a certain extent. The character design of this film is Nanjing artist Ke Ming, who has done character design for Shangmei Film many times, including "Red Army Bridge" and "Zhang Fei Zhengua", directed by Qian Yunda and borrowed from the shadow puppet art form. Shangmei Film has always had a tradition of collaborating with artists outside the factory, especially in character design, such as "The Haunting of the Heavenly Palace" with Zhang Guangyu Brothers, "Nezha Noisy Sea" with Zhang Tong, "Three Monks" and "Super Soap" with Han Yu. What Ke Ming and these people have in common is that they are good at using folk and traditional art elements, which is in line with the aesthetic pursuit of "exploring the road of national forms" constructed by Shangmeiying.

The character image of "Tianshu Qitan" is more cartoonish than that of the previous "Big Trouble in heavenly palace" and "Nezha Noisy Sea". Most of the characters have three heads, which are quite different from real humans (Sun Wukong and Nezha's body proportions are closer to real humans), and the larger the proportion of heads and bodies, the more "cute". The minor characters in the play, such as the people who appear in large numbers, have a simple face, using only two circles and several lines to form the eyes, nose and mouth. In the film, the image of the Jade Emperor inherits and has been transformed in "The Great Haunting of the Heavenly Palace", and the jade emperor in the "Great Haunting of the Heavenly Palace" has a long facial line, which is a middle-aged man who is disgusted with everything, disdainful, and his face is sinking like water and slightly cunning. The Jade Emperor's face was shortened, his face changed from pink to gray, his disdain and sense of pity increased, and his cunning was even worse. What remains unchanged is a pair of pampered hands and long nails.

Ke Ming's character design is based on a large number of traditional arts, the county official's father is changed from the traditional birthday star, the prefect is the king of the stove in the New Year painting, the little emperor is a marionette, especially the mouth opening and closing action, the fox girl's face is two pieces of pink and white and a beauty mole in the corner of the eye combines the opera Huadan and Caidan, and Yuan Gong's shape can be associated with the Dharma image of the Shiwan pottery doll.

In addition to the characters, the art design headed by Van Maddi is also developed and innovated on the basis of the art design of "The Haunting of the Heavenly Palace". The image of the Heavenly Palace and the Banquet of the Jade Emperor basically inherit the reference of the Dunhuang art style of "The Great Haunting of the Heavenly Palace", and the Lingxiao Treasure Hall is a reproduction of the Dunhuang Caves, and the gods of Wendong Wuxi were directly arranged into the Buddhist shrines in the caves. Fan Maddi had previously participated in the art design of the "Nine Colored Deer" adapted from the Dunhuang murals, and was skilled in the use of Dunhuang elements. In addition, "Tianshu Qitan" also absorbed the elements of modernity at that time, such as the taste of foreign science fiction movies in the gate of the Tianshu Library, and the ripples that Yuan Gong went down with a hammer to confirm this.

In the last part of the film, the dragon conjured by the egg and the tiger fighting method conjured by the old fox, after the tiger eats the dragon, the audience can think that either the tiger spits out the dragon, or the dragon hole pierces the tiger's belly, just like the snake fighting method of Sun Wukong and the Guangmu Heavenly King in "The Great Haunting of the Heavenly Palace". The classic is in front, here "Tianshu Qitan" also has to fight with the predecessors, the tiger spit out a bunch of dragon bones, like the dinosaur fossils in the museum, the bones become dragons and then fight with the tiger. Shangmei Film pursues "strange, interesting and beautiful", and a film has the exquisite and characteristics of a film.

"Heavenly Book" also pays attention to detail and polishing. Some people have examined that Yuan Gong is sitting in the Library of the Heavenly Garden, and the strange pattern on the back is the symbol of Mount Tai in the Taoist "Five Peaks True Shape Diagram", which is very appropriate to appear here. The eunuch read to the fox demon, "Carry the Emperor... Xian Gu is very good" can not wait for the content of the edict, only a few seconds, but the processing is not sloppy, the deformation and exaggeration of these words is not only in line with the absurdity of the content, but also without losing the sense of beauty, a little bit of stele characteristics, but also quite the charm of the typical works of the modern calligraphy movement that flourished in the eighties.

The above mentioned coupled with the composition of Master Wu Yingju (Wu composed for dozens of films such as "The Haunting of the Heavenly Palace") and the voice of the Voice of shanghai Translation Studio, such a lineup of immortals has created a classic.

However, with the release of "Tianshu Qitan" and another long animation novel in Shangmei two years later, "Golden Monkey Descending Demon", the author believes that it belongs to the golden age of blending traditional culture and animation technology with extreme precision, and since then, China has not produced its own animation features for more than a decade.

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There is a widely circulated story that the animation initiation of Japanese animation master Osamu Tezuka is the Chinese Wan brothers, in the 1980s, he was full of enthusiasm to discuss art with his Chinese counterparts, but the Chinese counterparts were asking how to reduce 1 second 24 frames to 22 frames, and how we calculate money for your OEM. Regardless of whether the story is true or not, the situation behind it is indeed real, and Chinese animators also need to raise their incomes in the tide of reform, which is very normal and legitimate.

All along, the main product of Shanghai Meiying is film animation short films, which can only be broadcast in the form of additional films before the audience buys tickets to watch the movies, which is bound to not bring higher sales revenue. When film studios are thinking about how to make martial arts and sell copies, the dilemma of art films naturally comes. At the same time, after the animation audience's viewing habits turned to television, the transformation of Chinese animation production was not smooth enough, and it could not provide a sufficient number of works to adapt to television broadcasting, and the feature film was divided into several segments and broadcast on television, and "Tianshu Qitan" was also broadcast in this way. In this case, the audience turned to the translated animation.

In the late 1980s, although there was still a film such as "Landscape and Water", which was artistically recognized, the audience received little response. For a long time after the 1990s, there were almost no high-level works in domestic animation. Although there are "Rubik's Cube Mansions", which is regarded as a childhood cult, it is still rough compared with previous classics. In "Golden Monkey Descending Demon", the white bone lady and her men change from dry bones and stones to humanoid fluidity, and the beauty of this art and the high degree of proficiency of technology are not seen in domestic animation for many years. In 1999, "Baolian Lantern", as another animated feature film many years later, did not reach the height of "Big Trouble in Tiangong" and "Heavenly Book Qitan".

In recent years, the rapid development of domestic animation, animation creation subjects from the Shanghai United States film family to the group of heroes, there have been some well-made, smooth action, full story, acclaimed and popular films, can share market share with Japanese and American animation. In this situation, Chinese animation can and should be considered from the perspective of beauty, and the current Chinese animators should once again establish Chinese animation with Chinese characteristics and characteristics of the times. So now the restoration and re-screening of "Tianshu Qitan" is a tribute to the ancestors and an aesthetic benchmark for revisiting Chinese animation. (Xin Yousheng)

Source: Beijing Youth Daily