Wen 丨 Amon
Recently, there is a domestic animation movie has been sprayed on the cusp of the storm, you may not have heard its name, but it is likely that you have seen the P-chart challenge for the characters in this movie "beauty" on the forum.
The movie is called "Lion Boy", a rising star dark horse with a Douban score of 8.3. However, the protagonist we want to talk about today is not it, but this domestic 3D animation face that has been given "insulting China" by netizens.
As early as the movie has not yet been released, or even just out of the trailer, the face of the protagonist group in the film has made many netizens sit still.
Hanging squinting eyes, collapsed nose, wide eye distance, these three elements put together, not naked "insult"! But the problem is that this is still a pure-bred domestic animation that promotes traditional Chinese art (hereinafter referred to as the National Movement), which will not be given to them.
You want to say that the character image connotation of the Chinese people, there is no European with a high nose and big eyes in the film to compare you; but you have to say that it is no problem, the face of this protagonist group is ugly and indignant.
This is a domestic 3D animation! What level do we usually look at? The male protagonist is either thick-eyebrowed, big-eyed juvenile, or deep eye sockets, thin lips, rich and handsome.
From "Tianbao Fu Demon Record"
The heroine does not say nine-headed body, at least it is a long-legged big-breasted melon face; even if it is a Lolita form, it must be Q round eyes, white and red skin, right?
From "Young Song Line, Wind Flower Snow Moon"
Where have we been so angry!
What's more, in the eyes of most netizens, they include people around them are not this kind of "small eyes hanging" appearance, and the behavior of covering all The People in the movie with such an image is not a typical stereotype?
But the strange thing is that you look back at those "traditional 3D domestic animations", in which even the passerby characters are Qing Yishui's high nose bridge and high eyebrow bones, is not it also using the stereotypical image of "net red face" to cover ordinary people? At this time, we felt that there was nothing wrong with it.
From "Yuan Long Season 2"
If you really want to say that according to the proportion of the population, the former's character image may be more common in real life. Compared with "Lion Boy", which has at least most of the Asian appearance characteristics, the 3D national face of Internet celebrities everywhere makes me feel more uncomfortable.
These similar faces and similar personalities actually do not belong to the same company and the same work. Sometimes I can't help but think, change the wig and beautiful pupils, can you really recognize who they are?
And this anxiety is not only me, many viewers can't help but scratch their heads when they see half of the animation, this face, where have I seen it?
Left: "Douluo Continent" Qian Yuxue Right: "Nine Songs of Heavenly Movement" Flame Lingji
The last time we experienced group face blindness was in the sea of balls in Dead or Alive Beach Volleyball, but at that time we could at least rely on the text version of the persona to distinguish. This time, facing the face test of multiple works and multiple plots, many people are a little difficult to accept.
Why do domestic animations have to engage in so many 3D? Why is the more exquisite the 3D modeling of these male and female protagonists, but the more indistinguishable they are? Could it be that the production team is reluctant to spend money?
Money may be a reason, but I think that in this era when 3D animation series have almost become a domestic feature project, the production team seems to be a bit innocent.
Many people talking about 3D national movement will mention a word - overtaking in curves.
In fact, it is not difficult to understand that China's animation industry started late, although there were excellent works such as "Nezha Noisy Sea" and "Hulu Brothers" in the early years, they were also produced by shanghai fine art film studios or traditional production units such as CCTV, and ordinary small animation companies did not emerge until the 21st century.
When Bug Master premiered on Fuji TV in 2005, we still had "Pleasant Goat and Gray Wolf" on our home TV. In the following years, although domestic 2D animation strives to catch up with the production level of Japan, there is still a big gap in both quality and quantity.
The Bugger
When the domestic 3D animation "Genie Century" was broadcast on IPTV in the United States in 2006, no one would think that it was born in a completely naïve industrial system.
Whether it's the level of production, the action design, or the unique characters, it is a world-class masterpiece. The next 3D animation work that we remember, "Qin Shi Mingyue", is only a year late.
These two works open up a whole new path for the development of the national movement: let go of the roll-up 2D and run in the direction of 3D that we are best at. It can be said that at present, in the development speed of the 3D animation long-form industry, China may be at the forefront.
3D National Movement also has an audience and influence overseas
This is due to outsourcing companies large and small in the country. The traditional animation production steps need to go through the planning - script - various settings - storyboard - layout (storyboard analysis) - original painting - middle painting to fill in the frame - coloring - synthesis - post-production, etc., but when it is transmitted to the hands of domestic outsourcing companies, it is often only necessary to start from the middle painting frame.
The source of the picture is zhihu @ lin ye
This has led to many domestic painters can be very skilled in finishing coloring, synthesis, reframing and other work, but they are not very good at the parts that need creativity such as storyboarding and original painting. If you start with 3D, you can basically skip the previous links that require the accumulation of special talents, and quickly and efficiently cultivate an excellent team.
However, this also leads to their extra big heads when faced with the choice of face setting and appearance. You want to say that their characters are not fine enough, and people even do blood vessels and pores for you, but it is too similar to perfection.
"Douluo Continent" Bibi Dong
The more elaborate and closer to the perfect, the closer to the real person, the more these characters have no personality. The level of domestic modeling gods is so high that you can know a little from the advertisements of the garbage page tour. As long as you close your eyes and imagine a beautiful woman, he can give you eight or nine inseparable to make.
The problem is that we close our eyes and imagine the beautiful women, as if they are all the same. Speaking of costumed 3D beauties, I think many people have in mind the appearance of several female characters on the packaging of "The Legend of paladin".
Or "Perfect World", "Tianlong Babu", "Journey" and other classic online games are almost worthy of the sexy posture on the posters of propaganda fraud.
The ancient modelers of domestic 3D animation are partly from the original 2D field, and the other part is from the game industry. So now looking back at the 3D national movement character image around 2010, there are basically the shadows of domestic games in the heyday of that year.
Part 1: "Young Song Line" Wind Flower Snow Moon Chapter Lei Wujie Part II: "Meteor Butterfly Sword"
Even a female junior high school student who plays fewer games will tell you that a beautiful woman in costume should look like this.
Such a similar aesthetic not only affects the modeler, but also affects us. Subconsciously, compared with the traditional Chinese women with cherry mouths and Danfeng hanging eyes in the text, we are more accepting of the big-eyed costumed beauties in the game standing paintings that conform to modern aesthetics.
But now that the era of domestic online games has passed for so long, these familiar magazines have also stopped publishing, why are the roles in the 3D national movement still so similar?
This has to mention another advantage of 3D animation, that is, the extremely high resource reuse rate.
If the same set of character modeling reuse is too much, then the same set of bones, the same set of skin, the same set of action collection data are taken out and reused separately, and then randomly matched, isn't it so obvious?
Source watermark, 3D national movement male protagonist face change
This is how many passers-by in the national movement are accomplished. If the character's action skeleton is not optimized according to the shape of the skin, it will naturally lead to the out-of-sync between the bone and the skin.
Even after optimization, such a large number of repetitive elements will only cause visual discomfort to the audience. We may be able to ignore this when shooting alone, but if the camera is given to a crowd or multiple characters, this repetition will be particularly awkward.
After talking about passers-by, let's talk about the protagonist. Logically, the portrayal of the main characters should require effort to portray in such a high-investment production, but the modeler is often difficult to start.
On the one hand, most people are too similar, and there will be white hair in each work, there will be a little Lolita, and even nine times out of ten there will be a goddess setting that is cold and difficult to play. If you want to make such a weak and similar persona, technology alone is not enough.
Source watermark
On the other hand, the main aesthetic of many viewers for 3D animation is "like", the more the protagonist should be like a real person, the better, and the background should be more realistic and better.
So the recent animations are rolling into "who is more like". Each screenshot of the character is enough to fake the real thing, and every frame background can also be used as wallpaper.
From the "Legend of mortal immortals", the work uses a real face model
Unfortunately, once moved, the godless eyes, stiff muscle changes, and exaggerated body language can directly trigger the "uncanny valley effect". It is precisely because it is too much like a real person, so for a little bit of detail that is different from humans, it is enough to make us panic.
And this degree of "showmanship" demand, equivalent to directly blocking the modeler's play space, the face and beauty and like a real person, can not only take the beauty in reality as a reference?
So it's not surprising that we're seeing more and more face-bumping celebrity characters appear in 3D national moves.
But is there only one way for domestic 3D animation to be realistic? The answer, of course, is no.
To take the most familiar examples, the "Nezha's Demon Boy Descending" and "White Snake" series have excellent expressiveness. And after they caricature the exaggerated face of the protagonist, it does not actually affect our understanding of its "face of the countryman".
However, such a non-realistic presentation seems to be more in domestic animation movies, but it is not popular in network dramas. The reason is that non-realistic animation has much higher requirements for original paintings and human designs.
In "White Snake", the audience is deeply reflected in the supporting role
If non-realistic animation wants to achieve a high degree of unity of the overall color of animation, but also let each character maintain a unique style of action and expression, it is actually a very productive thing, that is to say, it is difficult to achieve high quality and mass production.
For the current animation production company, with the same time and money, it is easy to produce a realistic 3D national movement on the basis of old works, but it is completely insufficient to put it on innovative non-realistic works.
Unique style of 3D national movement "Red Wild"
What's more, looking at the public pressure faced by "The Lion Boy", this kind of face innovation may not necessarily bring positive benefits.
If being a "replicant" saves money and insurance, why bother to curry favor with other people who are not traditional 3D animation audiences?
As long as the picture and main characters are exquisite enough, 3D National Movement will not worry about the market and audience at all, and it can indeed achieve cornering overtaking at the "simulation" level.
Earn applause and earn RMB, who cares about your male protagonist and the brother of the passerby next door?
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