The picture shows the poster of the animated movie "Our Winter Olympics" that combines many classic images of Chinese animation. Draft: Zhao Kairu
Core reading
Chinese style animation is not a reproduction of traditional culture as it is, nor is it an embellishment of the use of Chinese elements, but a narrative method that conforms to the acceptance habits of modern people, retelling traditional stories and giving new connotations to cultural images.
The in-depth excavation of Chinese excellent traditional culture by Chinese style animation promotes the combination of Chinese aesthetic spirit and contemporary aesthetic pursuit, and also provides strong support for the innovation of Chinese cultural expression methods and rhetorical methods.
Chinese animation is 100 years old this year. Over the past hundred years, Chinese animation has been deeply exploring the road of nationalization, and generations of creators have worked hard to integrate China's excellent traditional culture into animation art, creating a large number of excellent works that highlight Chinese style and Chinese style, and constantly adding new brilliance to the world's animation art treasure house. In recent years, Chinese animation art masterpieces have emerged one after another, becoming a beautiful landscape and writing a new chapter in the creative transformation and innovative development of China's excellent traditional culture.
A century-old pursuit of climbing the peak
With an obsolete camera, a few bundles of white newspapers, some film film, and powdered medicine, in an 8-square-meter pavilion, the wan brothers began experimenting with making cartoons of Their own in China. In 1922, the animated advertising film "Shu Zhendong Chinese Typewriter" produced by the Wan brothers was born, which became an indiscriminate chinese art animation. 19 years later, China's first full-length audio animation film "Iron Fan Princess" was released. The bold borrowing of ancient Chinese paintings, exaggerated and humorous character forms, and imaginative imagination, this animation shocks home and abroad with distinct artistic characteristics.
After the founding of New China, a large number of animation works such as "Little Tadpole Finds Mother", "Big Trouble in Tiangong", "Nezha Noisy Sea", "Three Monks" and so on have made Chinese animation shine on the world stage. According to statistics, from the 1950s to the mid-1980s, more than 30 of the hundreds of animation films created by Shanghai Fine Arts Film Studio won more than 40 awards at various international film festivals. Relying on these remarkable and excellent works, the "Chinese Animation School" has accumulated rich experience for the rapid development of mainland animation art with firm cultural self-confidence and distinct artistic style.
In recent years, excellent animation films such as "The Return of the Great Sage of Journey to the West", "The Demon Child of Nezha", "Big Fish and Begonias", "White Snake: Origins", "Jiang Ziya" and other excellent animation films have appeared one after another, and a number of animated short films such as "Chinese Ancient Poetry Animation" and "Peach Blossom Origin" have been loved by the majority of netizens on the online platform, and the century-old Chinese animation has ushered in a new highlight moment. These works take the excellent traditional Chinese culture as the deep foundation, through the artistic images of Sun Wukong, Nezha, Xu Xian, Jiang Ziya and other traditional charms, tell stories with a modern atmosphere, and express Chinese's pursuit of truth, goodness and beauty. When the audience reunites with these "old friends" on the screen, they can feel the vitality and creativity of Chinese culture rushing forward.
Unique and resonant
Animation is a comprehensive art, with the artistic characteristics of novelty and fun, innovation and change. It is good at expressing cultural connotations in new aesthetic styles, bringing new cultural cognition and aesthetic experience to the audience. In the course of a century of development, Chinese animation has formed a unique aesthetic style, and Chinese style animation has attracted much attention.
Chinese style animation makes full use of traditional painting techniques and folk art forms such as ink freehand, green landscapes, folk paper-cutting, New Year murals, shadow puppets, etc., presenting a unique visual language. The building based on the Fujian Tulou in "Big Fish and Begonias", the Bagua Tujin and The Smoke and Rain Jiangnan in "White Snake: Origins", and the Shan He Sheji diagram in "The Devil Child of Nezha" not only give people a sense of déjà vu cultural closeness, but also stimulate appreciation interest because the artistic image is refreshing, leading people to enter the depths of cultural imagination and obtain a wonderful aesthetic experience.
Chinese style animation is not a reproduction of traditional culture as it is, nor is it an embellishment of the use of Chinese elements, but a narrative method that conforms to the acceptance habits of modern people, retelling traditional stories and giving new connotations to cultural images. The perkynation path of Sun Wukong and the growth process of the protagonist Jiang Liu'er in "The Return of the Great Sage of Journey to the West" not only add new connotations to the images of Sun Wukong and Tang Monk, but also tell the story of Journey to the West through the repositioning of the relationship between master and apprentice. In "White Snake: Origins", the White Lady and Xiaoqing break through the single dimension of the traditional folk myth of "repaying grace", and enrich the audience's cognition of these two characters with the female image of daring to love and dare to hate. Nezha in "The Devil Boy of Nezha" is a confident and mischievous and lively modern child, who not only continues the rebellious character of the characters in traditional stories, but also jumps out of the traditional mythological framework and joins the modern consciousness of taking responsibility and grasping fate. Yu Lei in "Little Door God" and Jiang Ziya in "Jiang Ziya" are also full of life, and they are ordinary people who share joy and sorrow with the audience, narrowing the distance with the audience.
This treatment, while retaining the core of traditional image culture, also breaks people's stereotypes of traditional stories and characters, and gives traditional images a new artistic life in the "defamiliarization". In the fusion of traditional charm and modern emotions, these works exude a strong artistic appeal with the construction of modern consciousness figures. It can be seen that Chinese style animation is both traditional and modern, it tells the current story, which fits the aesthetic psychology of contemporary audiences, so it can arouse people's resonance.
Technology helps deep transformation
The development of animation is closely related to scientific and technological progress. It is precisely in the continuous breakthrough of technology that the creators integrate ink painting, shadow puppetry, paper cutting, opera programs and singing voices into the art of animation, interpreting moving stories and pictures. Decades ago, the use of layered rendering shading technology gave birth to unique Chinese ink animations such as "Little Tadpole Finds Mother" and "Mudi". Unforgettable audio-visual "blockbusters" such as "Big Haunting Heavenly Palace", "Nezha Noisy Sea", and "Tianshu Qitan" are also inseparable from the help of science and technology.
The trend of the times and the iteration of the audience have put forward new requirements for art. With the use and improvement of digital technology, the audiovisual presentation of animation works has become more fluent, bringing people a stronger sense of immersion. "Journey to the West: The Return of the Great Sage" uses real-life shooting and animation transformation technology to achieve realistic visual effects in scenes such as trees, meadows, and valleys. In order to shoot the scene of "Water Flooding The Golden Mountain" in "White Snake 2: Green Snake Robbery", the creative team spent nearly 3 years before and after. When the giant romantic sky rolls up, the flames are everywhere, the little blue and white snake, the gold and black collide, the ink charm and modern animation shine together, and the audience is immersed. In "Nezha's Devil Boy Descending", the special effects shots in the whole film accounted for nearly 80%, and the "leopard change" shot with only 5 seconds took two or three months to polish; the "Fire Lotus Melting Ice" screen was only 6 seconds, but the production took 6 months. These repeatedly polished shots and carefully portrayed details play a vital role in promoting the plot and setting off emotions, and the brilliant pictures and shocking effects have also become new carriers and expressions of Chinese aesthetics, reflecting the excellence of Chinese style animation in technology and art.
The continuous development of animation technology not only brings about changes in communication carriers and production methods, but also helps animation art to deepen and expand in content, form and aesthetics. It is in this sense that Chinese-style animation has opened up new possibilities for the expression of the era of excellent traditional culture. For example, the "Chinese Ancient Poetry Animation" series of works combines characters, stories and classic ancient poems, interpreting poems with facts and using poetry to explain reason, which is full of novelty. The abstract emotions and hazy artistic conceptions in the poems are transformed into fresh and delicate animation pictures, achieving the effect of blending feelings with "painting" and poetry "painting". For another example, "Big Fish and Begonias" draws ideas from Zhuangzi's concept of "getaway" and integrates ideas such as Taoist nature in traditional Chinese culture into animation. Although these works still have room for improvement in terms of picture production and narrative skills, they have made useful explorations for the deep integration of animation art and Chinese culture.
The Chinese style in the animation is a retrospect and aftertaste of tradition, and it is a new creation, showing a new cultural atmosphere. The in-depth excavation of Chinese excellent traditional culture by Chinese style animation promotes the combination of Chinese aesthetic spirit and contemporary aesthetic pursuit, and also provides strong support for the innovation of Chinese cultural expression methods and rhetorical methods.
(The author is deputy director of the Theoretical Research Office of the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles)
People's Daily ( 2022-04-01 20th edition)
!["Journey to the West: The Return of the Great Sage" 3DM review score 3.5: It is recommended to change the name or redo[fig]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAP///wAAACwAAAAAAQABAAACAkQBADs=)