"Hulu Brothers" once shouldered the glory of the "Chinese Animation School", and witnessed the dismal operation of domestic animation under the impact of foreign paintings, but more importantly, they also carried the secret of Chinese animation climbing to the peak that year.
On May 13, Mr. Hu Jinqing, the "father of Huluwa", passed away in Shanghai at the age of 83. Just eight months ago, Wang Bairong, another master in the field of paper-cut animation in China, also died at the age of 76. The departure of the older generation of animation masters, the traditional animation skills have not been passed on, so that those Chinese "art films" that once shocked the world have become "absolute".
"Hulu Brothers", broadcast in 1986, is one of the representative works of the end of China's "art film era". The most impressive thing after the 80s and 90s is not only the classic animation images of gourd babies, scorpion essences, and snake spirits, but also the brainwashing divine comedy "Huluwa Huluwa Seven flowers on a vine Wind and rain are not afraid of la ding dang ding dang ding dong dang ding hu hu baby ding dong dang ding hu hu da dang ding dong dong dang ding dong dang ding dong dong dang dang ding dong dang ding dong dang dang ding dong dong ding dong ding dong dong ding
Postcards sent by the gourd silk to Hu Jinqing, director of "Hulu Brothers"
An oolong incident in 2009 can explain the popularity of Huluwa. At that time, there were rumors that Elder Hu was suffering from depression, and a post-80s netizen launched an activity to send a postcard to Elder Hu to send warmth... Elder Hu later said in an interview that he had received 30,000 or 40,000 letters at once. This shows that the number of "gourd silk" (fans of gourds) is amazing.
Pirated villain book "Huluva vs Transformers"
Today, the "Hulu Seven Brothers" are still continuing their "artistic life" through the memes and spoofs in variety shows that have gone viral on the Internet, just like the popular "Huluwa vs Transformers" that was so popular that pirate booksellers brought it to the new compilation.
But now that the master has left, looking at the classic animation image of "being parodied", I can't help but feel bitter. After all, they once shouldered the glory of the "Chinese Animation School", and witnessed the dismal operation of domestic animation under the impact of foreign paintings, but more importantly, they also carried the secret of Chinese animation climbing to the peak that year.
"Hulu Brothers" appeared in the transition period of market economy
Facing the United States and Japanese Animation Witness the decline of "art films"
Astro Boy
"Hulu Brothers" was born in the period of great changes in China's reform and opening up. Chinese animation, which had just endured a decade of catastrophe and was waiting to be revived, encountered a formidable rival – with the rapid popularity of television, beginning with the Broadcast of the Japanese cartoon "Astro Boy" on CCTV in December 1980, a large number of high-quality and inexpensive foreign animations almost poured into China in the form of dumping.
"Astro Boy" is the representative work of Osamu Tezuka, the originator of Japanese anime, although the introduction is only a black-and-white version, but whether it is a gorgeous science fiction setting, a variety of debut characters, or the scale of dozens of episodes, it is incomparable to the domestic animation at that time.
In the five years since, Astro Boy, "The Tale of the Mole", "A Wise Break", "Flower Fairy", "Smurfs" and "The Forest Emperor" have taken turns. In 1986, when "Hulu Brothers" was broadcast, "Mickey Mouse Donald Duck", "Extraordinary Princess Ciri", "Zorro", "Mimi Wanderer" and "Wait and See" were introduced successively.
Those "better-looking" foreign animations that have undergone the "survival of the fittest" in the market economy have a strong impact on China's domestic animations, which already have a small output under the planned economy production model. In order to find a new way out, in 1979, China's first series of animation to try to operate commercially (the "series of animation" mentioned in this article refers to the current TV animation) "Avanti's Story" debuted, although under the many limitations of the planned economic system, the time span of 13 episodes of animation was as long as nine years, but the "Avanti" series still pointed out a clear path for the marketization of Chinese animation.
Under the tide of the planned economy turning to the market economy, the Shanghai Fine Arts Film Studio also entered a period of transformation and began to try to commercialize. Since 1984, the studio has begun the filming of three series of films, "Sanmao Wanderer", "Black Cat Sheriff" and "Golden Monkey Descending Demon". By 1986, the three workshops of puppetry, paper cutting and animation of the Mei film factory were all put into the production of series films, and the series of "Hulu Brothers", "Legend of the Devil" and "The Adventures of the Dirty King" came into being.
However, it cannot be denied that the commercial demands of the market economy run counter to the production method of traditional Chinese art films that work slowly and produce fine work, although "Hulu Brothers" still inherits the creative style and production team of traditional american film studios, but it still cannot be compared with "The Great Haunting of the Heavenly Palace", "Tianshu Qitan", "Clams In Contention", "Fisher Boy", which were born in the most brilliant era of China's "art films".
At this time, Chinese animation has begun to try to Westernize the content, and "Hulu Brothers" is a typical representative. In order to compete with American and Japanese animations for the audience's attention, coupled with insufficient funds, director Hu Jinqing led the production team to focus more on creating dramatic conflicts in the story.
It was not until three years later, in 1989, as the first sequel to the Chinese animation series, the sequel to "Hulu Brothers" "Hulu Xiao Kong" was released, although it can still be seen that there is still some continuation of the "Chinese school" animation style. But unfortunately, in the same year, the "Great Thief", "Fox Lena" and "Strange Mongolian Horse" produced by the US Film Studio not only disappeared in the traditional national art style, but even the core elements such as the script plot and the characters were completely Westernized.
Stories like "The Great Thief" are completely adapted from German children's literature, and there is no trace of "Made in China" at all. At this point, the slogan of "exploring the road of national style" at the beginning of the development of Chinese animation has gradually been abandoned. "Hulu Little Kong" has also become the "absolute sound" of the "art film" era.
The "Chinese School" has achieved the glory of "art films"
China's original "paper-cut animation"
Wan Brothers
In the 20s and 40s of the last century, the pioneer of Chinese animation, the "Wan Brothers", began to explore from scratch, successively creating China's first animated short film with a storyline, "Big Trouble Studio", the first audio animation short film "Camel Dance" (1935), and China's first animated feature film "Iron Fan Princess" (1941), inspired by Disney's animation "Snow White", promoting Chinese animation to take the lead in the world compared with other films. Japanese animation pioneer Osamu Tezuka decided to devote himself to animation after seeing "Princess Iron Fan".
The Character Image of "Iron Fan Princess" with a rather Westernized character image
Just after the founding of the People's Republic of China, Chinese art workers realized that blindly imitating American and Soviet animation was not a long-term solution, and Te Wei, the director of the art film group of the Shanghai Film Studio at that time, took the lead in proposing the slogan of "exploring the road of national style".
With the birth of "ShenBi" and "Proud General", two works with Chinese national style, and the establishment of The Shanghai Fine Arts Film Studio, "Chinese Animation" ushered in the peak of its development in the late 1950s and early 1960s. First of all, "Little Tadpole Finds Mother", "Mudi" and other original Chinese ink animations surprised the world, and then the birth of "Big Trouble Tiangong" further established the status of the "Chinese School" in the history of world animation.
Ink animation "Little Tadpole Finds Mother"
During this period, a large number of classic works such as the puppet animation "Avanti", the ink animation "Mudi", the paper-cut animation "Fisher Boy", the feature animation "Tianshu Qitan" and "Nezha Noisy Sea", as well as the peak of Chinese animation "The Haunting of the Heavenly Palace" and many other classic works have come out, which represent the highest level of Chinese and even world animation.
The use of "fine art film" to refer to animation film shows that the animation predecessors at that time pursued a high degree of professionalism in the creation of art in their works. Among the many "fine art films" films, if "ink animation" inherits the bones of the literati and represents the "elegant" side of Chinese animation, then "paper-cut animation" symbolizes the "vulgar" side and is more grounded.
"Eight Commandments of Pigs EatIng Watermelon"
In 1958, China's first paper-cut animation film "Eight Commandments of Pigs Eating Watermelon" was filmed by Wangu Toad, the founder of Chinese paper-cut animation. Hu Jinqing, the director of "Hulu Brothers", was also involved in the creation as a styling designer at that time. Since then, the excellent masterpieces of Chinese paper-cut animation such as "Jigong Dou Cricket", "Fishing Boy", "Ginseng Doll", "Golden Conch" and so on have emerged.
Although paper-cut animation is not the first in China, the predecessors of Chinese animation represented by Wangu Toad have made national improvements to paper-cutting pieces, integrating the modeling techniques of traditional Chinese folk arts such as shadow puppetry, window flowers, and paper-cutting into it, so that the static cut-out image is full, and the performance program of traditional opera is used in character action design, forming a paper-cut animation with a unique Chinese folk aesthetic style. It can be said that the new animation form created by the predecessors of the Us Film Studio through independent exploration has not been affected by overseas paper-cut animation.
Paper-cut animated short film "Mr. NanGuo"
Paper-cut animated short film "Golden Conch"
Compared with "ink animation", which emphasizes the beauty of artistic conception, paper-cut animation is very pragmatic. According to the different stories, the folk customs of different regions will be integrated, which can be described as a large collection of folk traditional cultures in various parts of China. For example, Director Wang Bairong's masterpiece "Lifting a Donkey" uses the paper-cutting style of Wei County, Hebei Province; while "Mouse Marrying a Girl" has a strong Shandong Gaomi folk atmosphere; "Fire Boy" uses the batik art of ethnic minorities in Yunnan.
The Shandong Gaomi folk paper-cutting style of "Mouse Marrying Daughter"
The paper-cut animation "Fire Boy" uses the batik art of ethnic minorities in Yunnan
In the 1980s, Hu Jinqing, who adhered to the concept of "innovation", also created his own ink paper-cutting animation, created a craft method called "pulling hair", replaced the cutting with hand tearing, and created a furry effect of animal body contours, which was broadcast in 1982 with "Naughty Golden Monkey" and the short film "Sandpiper Competition" in 1983. The latter also won the Golden Rooster Award for Chinese Film, the highest award in the Chinese animation industry, and the Silver Bear Award for Short Films at the 34th West Berlin International Film Festival.
"Sandpiper And Mussel Scramble" looks like an ink animation, but it is actually a paper-cut animation that uses the brushing process
Hu Jinqing has also become the number one person in the field of paper-cut animation after Wangu Toad. "Hulu Brothers" comes entirely from his ideas and creativity.
The shooting process of the paper-cut animation is similar to the stop motion animation,
The subtle changes in the character's movements are posed through the rotation of the joints, and then the entire action is connected frame by frame. Taking the role of Huluwa as an example, the original model was only the size of a finger
To save money "no craftsmanship"
Seven dollars a grid animation The gourd babies can only live in caves
Director Hu Jinqing insisted on the concept of "innovation" before his death, he said that "we must find new ways to have a way to live", and paper-cut animation is the form of animation that he has been exploring all his life. As the first paper-cut animation in China to be shot in the form of a series, "Hulu Brothers" has a total of 13 episodes, each episode is 10 minutes, breaking through the volume limit of the general Shanghai Mei film studio animation short films. From its beginning, the paper cut was no longer presented to the audience in the form of a small short film, but for the first time served as a long narrative.
Scorpion essence and ejaculation became the image benchmark of the villain
In the story, the scorpion spirit and the snake spirit are imprisoned in Hulu Mountain, the pangolin accidentally penetrates the cave, the two goblins escape, and the people suffer from it. The pangolin tells Grandpa Yamashita that only by planting a seven-colored gourd can the goblin be destroyed. Later, the grandfather planted seven large gourds of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple, but was caught by the goblins.
Seven gourds landed one after another into seven boys with different superpowers, and they fought with all their might to save Grandpa. Red Baby is Hercules, Orange Baby is Clairvoyance and Tailwind Ear, Yellow Baby is Iron Head, Green Baby can fire, Green Baby has water, Blue Baby has stealth, Purple Baby has treasure gourd. They were captured alive by cunning goblins and sent to the alchemy furnace to refine the Seven Hearts Dan. In the end, the Hulu brothers united, played to their own strengths, rushed out of the alchemy furnace, and defeated the goblins.
In a total of 130 minutes of content, the storyline can be described as twists and turns, and the confrontation between the good and evil sides is more intense than that of "The Great Haunting of the Heavenly Palace" and "Nezha Noisy Sea", which is impossible to see in previous art short films.
The story is very "foreign" "Hulu Little Kong"
Due to the strong response after the film was broadcast, from 1989 to 1991, Shanghai Mei film studio filmed 6 more episodes of "Hulu Little King Kong", and the main creators were basically the original team of "Hulu Brothers". This also made Hulu Brothers the first animated series of its era to have a sequel.
In the sequel, the gourd brothers transform into a seven-colored mountain, suppressing the snake and scorpion demons, and in order to avenge them, the green snake spirit repeatedly defeated the gourd brothers and the seven brothers and became the gourd little King Kong, destroyed the black wind monster, burned the spider spirit, and destroyed the green snake cave.
During the hit "Hulu Brothers" series, some parents questioned the violence and bloody scenes. But in any case, under the trend of the animation series imitating foreign countries and ignoring the national style, these two works not only maintain a strong national style, but also integrate thrilling commercial elements, which can be said to be the most dazzling works of Chinese animation in this period.
But in fact, compared with the paper-cut short films such as "Sandpiper And Mussel Competition" created earlier by director Hu Jinqing, "Hulu Brothers" is not very fine in paper-cutting craftsmanship. In an interview, Hu Lao bluntly said, "'Hulu Brothers' is not exquisitely crafted, it is all black lines, its drama is all in contradictions and conflicts, spent on making drama, the drama is not done well, this film is finished." ”
Screenshot of Hu Lao's interview
For this trade-off, it is entirely because of the cost of the film, Hu Lao said: "At that time, we were forced to have no way, because our cost was only 60,000 yuan, 60,000 yuan was all given to us, and there were only five to six yuan a box." But the cost of a single episode of a Hollywood cartoon in the same period was already as high as a million.
In order to save costs, "Hulu Brothers", which was originally adapted from the folk fairy tale "Ten Brothers", was cut off three brothers and became "seven brothers", and they all wore the same clothes, but the colors were different. In addition, the biggest change is that the emperor, the minister, and the county official who originally appeared as villains in the folk fairy tale were directly reduced to the two roles of snake spirit and scorpion spirit, and the original complex spatial background was finally turned into a cave. When Elder Hu talked about this matter later, he once laughed helplessly: "Because there is no money, the Hulu brothers can only live in the cave." ”
Can the pinnacle of Chinese animation be replicated?
Art films are hard to pop Stories are king
Paper-cut animation declined sharply in the 1990s, the small-cost production mode of domestic animation is difficult to compete with foreign large-scale productions, and the realistic market environment is unlikely to give paper-cut pieces more time to explore more narrative content and formal performance. "Hulu Brothers" marked the end of the era of "Chinese school" animation, after which the Studio fully entered the production of foundry and TV animation series. Series of animations such as "Hale Brothers" and "Shuk Beta" have become more childhood memories of the post-90s.
The Hale Brothers
Today's Chinese animation production is almost all digital painting and CG, and there is no trace of paper-cut animation anymore. The decline of paper-cut animation is just a microcosm of the trough of Chinese animation.
When it comes to domestic animation, we are always reminiscing about childhood. So, can the peak of the "Chinese School" once be replicated? The answer may be no.
Taking the ink animation that once introduced Chinese animation to the world as an example, it was extremely innovative at the beginning, but in today's environment of the industrialization of domestic animation, it is no problem to produce short films, but if you want to do a long film, or a series of animations, on the one hand, the audience's acceptance is limited, on the other hand, it is time-consuming, laborious and expensive.
In the past, ink and paper-cut animation in the production of time cost is much higher than the current computer CG, CG animation a lot of work is handed over to the machine, with the development of technology, the efficiency of CG animation is still improving, the cost will continue to decline, and ink or paper-cut animation because it is more dependent on people to perform, the cost of the space to fall is very small. This may also be why the popular American cartoon South Park switched to computer CG production after filming a pilot episode with paper-cut animation.
Although the glory of early Chinese animation is difficult to replicate, "Hulu Brothers" still leaves us with an animation creation secret, that is, to spend time to tell a good story, and to tell a good story. Even if the external form is not perfect, a good story will always touch people's hearts.
Appendix 1: "Hulu Brothers" works combing
"Hulu Brothers", which aired in 1986, was the first paper-cut animation series in China.
Aired in 1991, "Hulu Donkey Kong" is a sequel to "Hulu Brothers". It was also the sequel to the first series of anime series born in that era.
The film version of "Hulu Brothers", released in 2008, is the artist's "adhering to a rigorous artistic attitude, extracting the essence from the series of films, and undergoing artistic processing again", so it is not too much to be praised as "seven pieces of eight pieces".
But in fact, when it comes to movies, "Hulu Brothers" was released in theaters as early as the 70s and 80s. Cinemas at the time were short films before the release of the film, and "Hulu Brothers" officially made its debut on the big screen in this way. It was only after a brief big-screen test run that the cartoon began to air on television. But later, due to the demand for marketization, the addition of animated short films began to be gradually replaced by advertising.
The 2006 episode of The New Hulu Brothers is a new animated series of the TV anime series Hulu Brothers, which premiered 30 years ago. Compared with the old version, the characters in the new version of Huluwa have become a lot more cute. There are 52 episodes, each episode is 11 minutes long.
Originally scheduled to be released in 2019, "Hulu Brothers 2" is a sequel animation created by Shanghai Fine Arts Film Studio, and the classic sequel launched at the same time includes "The Legend of the Nine-tailed Fox of Tianshu Qitan".
"Ruining Childhood" series
Scheduled to be released in 2020, "Hulu Brothers Live-Action Edition" is positioned as a youth idol film, and the main actors are well-known actors loved by the audience. Qian Jianping, director of Shanghai Fine Arts Film Studio, said: "Every step and every information of the live-action version of "Hulu Brothers" is used in the way of commercial marketing. ”
The film was jointly established by the two well-known domestic film companies Anle Film and Shanghai Film Group, the "Shanghai Film Anle Film Company", the president of Anle Film, gold medal producer Jiang Zhiqiang will serve as the film's producer, he said that "to do our best to reshape the classic on the screen again."
Appendix 2: Foreign Paper-Cut Animations
In English, Cut-out animation is similar to paper-cut animation and is more commonly used, but a more accurate translation of "paper-cut animation" is Paper Cut-Out Animation. "Paper-cut animation" is also considered a type of stop-motion animation.
《The Apostle》
The world's earliest known paper-cut animation was El Apóstol by Italian cartoonist Quirino Cristiani in Argentina in 1918.
Stills from The Adventures of Prince Archimedes
The work is The Adventures of Prince Archimedes, the world's first silent feature-length animation, which was released in Germany on September 3, 1926. The film is the pinnacle of paper-cut animation, and even using today's eyes to review it does not have the slightest sense of backwardness.
Lucas's Dream Factory
Other famous paper-cut animations include the 1983 animated film Twice Upon a Time, directed by John Coty and produced by George Lucas, using the traditional paper-cut animation process.
Released in 2017, Angelina Jolie's "Breadwinner" was created using computer special effects to simulate the effects of paper-cut animation.
The opening credits of the Disney movie The Mis-Adventures of Merlin Jones
Disney also began to produce paper-cut animation in the 1950s and 1960s, which were made by hand, using cameras to shoot frame by frame and then concatenated into images. Take a look at the opening credits of the 1964 film The Mis-Adventures of Merlin Jones and get a feel for Hollywood's paper-cut animation.
Today's paper-cut animations are mostly made using computers, using scanned images or vector graphics instead of physical cutting materials. South Park, a paper-cut animation, is a typical example, only the pilot episode was actually filmed in the traditional paper-cut animation production method, and then it was all handed over to the computer to complete.