What is the role of art animation on the development of animation

In recent years, China's animation industry, while actively learning from the West, has begun to explore traditional art styles in the hope of making animated films with traditional Chinese characteristics. Especially when the Chinese traditional themes and Chinese traditional style as the main creative elements of the movie "Mulan", "Kung Fu Panda" in the world animated film market has achieved great success, we can not help but ask ourselves: why these films were not born in China? At the early stage of the birth of animated films, Chinese animation was famous for its unique connotation and style. Ink animation, paper-cut animation and the unique mural style derived from traditional Chinese art style, combined with traditional Chinese humanistic thoughts and educational concepts, exuded an extraordinary and unique charm. Today's world animation movie market is a warring states, the situation of the lords, the United States, Japan animation with its mature commercial animation mode and smooth painting style, in their unique humanistic concepts under the auspices of the popularity. European animation with its unique cultural heritage with extraordinary imagination and creativity began to mount the world stage. Chinese animation is starting afresh and developing rapidly. If it wants to occupy a place on the stage of world animation, it needs to absorb more nutrients in the national soil. The following author takes the application of traditional art style in early animation films as an example, and conducts relevant analysis to explore the reasons for the success of traditional Chinese animation, with a view to making reference to the development of modern animation.

I. Application of Ink Painting in Animated Films

The unique Chinese artistic expression, ink painting, gave birth to ink animation.

(I) The humanistic essence of ink painting is adhered to in ink animation

The temperament and mood of traditional Chinese ink painting adheres to the aesthetics of Laozhuang, which considers the beauty of the heaven and the earth (nature) to be the greatest and the most beautiful. It emphasizes the Taoist realm of closeness to nature and the unity of heaven and man. It is believed that when a person harmonizes with all things in nature, he or she can achieve an open-mindedness, noble interest and spiritual clarity and tranquility. Ink animation in its intention and conception also adheres to this characteristic, such as the "landscape love" majestic atmosphere, landscape with sometimes melodious and sometimes exciting guzheng, people in the music and nature as one, human emotions into the music and landscape between. A film of less than 20 minutes expresses China's humanistic view of nature to the fullest extent between ink and water. Another example is The Pastoral Flute (Fig. 1), which is a sound ink landscape throughout. Surrounding the clue of a shepherd boy herding cattle, whether it is the woods in the early morning, the lofty mountains, the pouring waterfalls, or the frolicking butterflies, the flying birds, the healthy deer, etc., all of them embody the vividness and magnificence of the nature amidst the melodious sound of the flute. These beautiful pictures in ink and wash style subconsciously cultivate people's sentiment and wash their hearts, making them love and get closer to nature more. These animated films bring the advantages of the ink painting style into full play, giving full play to the edifying function of aesthetics. In the story, the dream of the shepherd boy begins with the transformation of a leaf into a butterfly, which also potentially expresses the humanistic and naturalistic view of Zhuang Zhou's dream of a butterfly in a subtle way. The humanistic feelings and the ink and brush mood expressed under the unique painting tools of China have been passed down in the ink animation movie, creating excellent animation movies with unique style.

(2) Ink animation inherits the artistic style of ink painting

Ink animation film is a great innovation of Chinese animation. It introduces the traditional Chinese ink painting into the animation production, creating an ethereal and distant mood in the virtual and real, ink-drenched images, and at the same time with the linear style of traditional music elements, so that the viewer can get the most perfect visual as well as auditory enjoyment. This style comes from the traditional Chinese painting technique, which is not only the product of China under certain historical conditions and humanistic environment, but also the expression of China's unique outlook on life and art concepts. Using this style in the production of animation is not only the inheritance and popularization of traditional painting style, but also has its unique advantages. The difference with general animation is that ink animation has no outline lines, and the water and ink are naturally rendered on the rice paper. A natural ink painting is a scene within reach. The character modeling is beautiful and dynamic, and the soft strokes reveal a poetic mood, which completely shows the aesthetic mood of Chinese ink painting, which does not seek for its resemblance, but seeks for its god. Appreciating a good ink cartoon is like experiencing a spiritual cleansing in nature. The development of ink cartoons has made a significant breakthrough in the artistic style of cartoons.

In the case of backward technical conditions, want to create the artistic effect of ink style on the movie screen, its production process is tedious and difficult. In order to create a sound ink effect, coloring had to be done in layers. In addition to the background production, each frame had to be divided into multiple layers, drawn on different celluloid films, and shot separately and repeatedly by animation cameramen. Finally, all the filmed pieces were combined together and processed into an ink rendering using photographic methods. The time spent on photography alone to make one ink animation film was enough to make four or five regular animation films of the same length. Because of this, although many countries know the production method, but they are afraid to try it easily. The perseverance and patience of the Chinese have created the miracle of ink animation.

(3) The unique advantages of ink animation

1. Ink animation comes from China's unique traditional paintings in terms of style, and thus has uniqueness in terms of visual effect, which inherits the unique humanistic feelings of the Chinese nation.

2. Ink and wash style animation, with imagery in realism, especially as the background of the ink and water landscape, the brushwork is atmospheric, in the atmosphere and mood of the creation of its unique advantages. Although ink painting does not use much color, it has rich layers and smooth strokes, and its style comes from the traditional Chinese painter's perception of nature, so it has a unique advantage in the description of nature and the expression of emotional imagery.

3. Ink and wash animation utilizes more of the traditional Chinese painting style of combining realism and realism in the expression of characters and roles. This style has concise strokes, smooth and free lines, and carries anger and character between the brush and ink. For example, in "The Pastoral Flute", the buffalo and the shepherd boy, before the cow moves, its spirit has already appeared; before the shepherd boy speaks, its meaning has already arrived.

China's unique ink animation, in the stage of history was once brilliant, so far the light does not diminish. 1960, the Shanghai United States Film Studio made a short film called "ink animation clip", including "fish and shrimp", "frog", "chickens" as an experiment, a total length of 10 minutes. In the same year, the first ink animation film "Tadpole Looking for Mother" was born, in which the shape of the small animals was taken from the pen of master Qi Baishi, and the film became a sensation all over the world when it was released. Subsequently, many other excellent films were made, such as "Pastoral Flute" and "Landscape", which won many awards in the international arena. Since then, there has been a period of silence in traditional Chinese ink animation. Nowadays, with the intervention of computers, many short films imitating the effect of ink animation through three-dimensional animation production have appeared one after another, such as the recent popularity of "summer" on the Internet, etc., which can also be regarded as a continuation of the traditional ink animation style.

Second, the application of folk paper-cutting in animated films

Paper-cutting is one of the wonders of China's folk art, and this traditional art form known to all households in China's animated films also exudes a unique light. As one of China's unique folk art forms, as early as in the Han and Tang dynasties, folk women have used gold and silver foil and colorful silk cut into square wins, flowers and birds pasted on the temples as a decorative fashion. Later, the gradual development of the festival, with color paper cut into a variety of flowers, plants, animals or people stories, pasted on the window (called "windowpane"), the lintel (called "door paper") as a decorative, but also as a gift decoration or embroidery patterns. Paper-cutting is usually done with a pair of small scissors, while some professional artists use a special carving knife, called "paper-cutting". The origin of this form of art style used in the creation of animated films can be traced back to Wan Guchan, the second oldest of the Wan brothers, who was the originator of the art style. After many experiments, he successfully made the first color paper-cut film in 1958. In the subsequent films such as "The Fisherman's Boy", "The Cricket Fighter", and "The Golden Conch", his skills matured. Wan and his creative partners drew on the artistic characteristics of Chinese shadow puppetry and folk window-dressing, so that various types of paper-cut characters or animals conveyed their joys and sorrows on the screen, some of them ancient and some of them elfin and lively. Such a form is integrated with many traditional story subjects, and the characteristics of local visual arts are fully displayed in the dissemination of animated films, creating a precedent of national animation style, and making an outstanding contribution to China's early animation career.

(I) Paper-cut animation inherits the folk culture in the art of paper-cutting

Paper-cut animation is self-created in China, and its unique art form originates from the shadow play and folk window decoration in China's folk culture.

The art of paper-cutting itself comes from the daily life of the working people in China, has a wide historical origin and mass foundation, is not influenced by utilitarian thinking, and has never lost its pure and fresh qualities in the long process of historical evolution, with distinctive artistic characteristics and interest in life. The choice of subject matter is mostly things seen in daily life, or auspicious things in folklore, with the theme of praising life and expressing good wishes, which is an important part of China's folk culture. Early paper-cut animation in the content and theme also continued this tradition, mostly to folklore, fables and other subjects to punish evil and promote good as the theme, its strong artistic style has become a representative of China's folk vernacular culture. Such as "the story of New Year's Eve" (Figure 2), in the subject matter taken from folk tales, a "year" in addition to the "Eve" of the young heroes of the animated film, in the form of a paper-cut filming techniques. The whole film is lively and festive, with the use of red and purple colors, full composition and a strong sense of decoration; it is witty and humorous in the setting of various characters and plots, and vividly interprets the traditional festival of New Year's Eve in China. It vividly portrays the traditional festival of New Year's Eve in China. The celebratory, lively and auspicious features of folk culture jump out. Some young people identify more with "foreign festivals" than with traditional festivals, and this art form derived from folk culture is also a good medicine for popularizing traditional culture, which is invaluable in today's rampant flow of imported culture.

(2) The application of paper-cutting art style in animation film

Paper-cutting animation, in the art form of reference to the folk paper-cutting, but also absorbed the shadow play in the movement and styling of the characteristics of the local characteristics. It comes from the folk culture, from the Chinese people's hardworking, brave and cheerful character traits. In styling, the lines are smooth, with the characteristics of folk paper-cutting in which ten thousand cuts are constantly made and the strokes are connected; the characters are mostly sideways when they are in motion, with no perspective changes, which is extremely decorative; in color, the colors are bright and saturated, and are often chosen to carry strong joyful and auspicious colors. At the same time, it also pays attention to absorb the characteristics of other folk art such as New Year's paintings, decorative paintings, very national characteristics.

Paper-cut animation in the production of paper-cut characters (animals) in the joints, with a fine copper wire or small sticky particles linked, and then placed them in front of the camera frame by frame shooting, there are also individual very flexible movements and clips are used in animated cartoons animation drawing method of filming. The cost of filming paper cutouts is lower than that of cartoons, but the disadvantage is that the change of expression of the paper cutout characters and the turn of face and turn can not be as flexible as cartoons, and there are limitations to the movements. When there is a large action clip, you need to keep cutting, keep drawing, keep shooting. For a short paper-cut movie, there are many cuts of the same character, and it is difficult to avoid keeping the same angle of the character's movement for a long time. These limitations, of course, have become one of its artistic characteristics. In the production process of modern animation, we can completely in the computer's virtual platform to complete the production of this form of animation, not only can avoid its shortcomings, but also in the shape as well as the color of the characteristics and advantages of all play.

(C) the unique advantages of paper-cutting animation

1. Paper-cutting animation originated from our folk culture, is the crystallization of the wisdom of the masses of the people, reflecting the unique local characteristics of our country.

2. The artistic style of paper-cut animation is simple and atmospheric, rich in decorative, loved by children.

3. The flat modeling of paper-cut animation, flat coloring is both its shortcomings and its characteristics, which is rooted in traditional folk culture, in the modern animated film can be inherited and carried forward, increasing the artistic style of animated films.

Three, the application of traditional frescoes in animated films

In China's five thousand years of history, frescoes are one of the important types of art, since the Zhou Dynasty, successive generations of royal palaces, tombs are decorated with frescoes of the system. With the flourishing of religion, murals are widely used in temples and caves. In the late Northern Wei dynasty cave murals, there is a mythological theme of Taoist thought mural statues, because it is painted on the walls or ceilings of buildings, mural art has its own unique programmatic features. Such as in the composition processing, to flat column type, radial type, the center of the dispersion type; in the plane modeling, the lines are simple and concise, the scene expression of a strong sense of formality, the character performance more curves; bright and simple colors. The above characteristics of Chinese mural decorative art have been handed down to the present day, becoming a part of traditional Chinese culture, which was borrowed for the early animated films. Especially since the frescoes were originated from religion, the scenes and characters in them can be used as reference and application for animated films with mythological themes. For example, the animated film "Ne Zha Follies the Sea," which is based on mythological themes, draws on the artistic style of traditional mural paintings in both characterization and scene modelling. Figure 3 shows a picture of the Heavenly Palace in "Ne Zha Follies the Sea". In the representation of the Heavenly Palace, the movie adopts a top-to-bottom representation, with the implication of a ninefold palace. At the same time, the film adopts the traditional symmetrical composition to reflect the majesty and grandeur of the royal family, and the dispersed Buddhist light modeling commonly used in Buddhism to reflect the abode of the gods. In the scene of the heavenly palace is added to the performance of the flying sky. Comparing the flying skies in the Dunhuang murals in Figure 4, it is not difficult to see their origin. This kind of borrowing and change is the inheritance and development of tradition in the new era, which makes the film have a strong Chinese flavor under the smooth lines and puts a distinctive Chinese logo on it.

The above mainly introduces the borrowing and application of the traditional arts of ink art, paper-cutting art and mural art in early Chinese animated films, and it is the application of these arts that makes these early animated films have a strong Chinese heritage. China's humanistic spirit, folk culture and traditional modeling style are integrated into them, which shine uniquely in the world's animation history. In today's highly competitive global market, while the technology develops rapidly, inheriting the advantageous features of traditional animation and integrating contemporary aesthetic interests will determine how far our animated films can go. The eternal proposition of inheritance and development is still in front of us.