No matter what age you are in, you must have seen domestic animation to a greater or lesser extent.
Animation is our enlightenment of good and evil, and the characters carry our expectations for the future.
Today, when Pixar, Disney and Japanese animation are sweeping the world, there seem to be few national comic works. Turning the clock back to the last century, Chinese animation once had unlimited scenery and created excellent animation that belonged to the nation and the world.
▲The picture comes from the Internet
In 1897, Shanghai introduced American animated films, and the little people moving on the screen attracted the attention of four Chinese youths. In order to uncover its secrets, the four Young Chinese Brothers, the Wan Brothers, wrote to ask European and American producers, but received no response.
As a result, the Wan brothers studied animation technology in a seven-square-meter pavilion in Shanghai's Zhabei District, sold their property, endured hunger and cold, and finally completed a 12-minute short film "The Big Trouble Studio" in 1926.
The spirit of Chinese animators who do not accept defeat has laid the groundwork as early as when they are indiscriminate.
"Big Trouble Studio" adopts a combination of live-action and animation production method - the early animation technology is limited, if the background and characters have to be repeatedly drawn and changed, the workload is too large, so using a real background to synthesize animation, equivalent to not painting the background, improves efficiency.
▲ Wan Liming (middle), Wan Gu Toad (right), Wan Chaochen (left) three brothers, unfortunately "The Great Trouble Studio" has been lost in the war
And the real world is associated with cartoon characters, which is a very magical thing.
Not long ago, a big movie "Tom and Jerry" was released, which also adopted the fusion of live-action and animation, but ignored the background of the times and forced "retro", and the two-dimensional and three-dimensional illogical interaction seemed to be different.
▲The GIF is from the movie "Tom and Jerry"
The War of Resistance broke out, and Disney animation came at the same time. The Wan brothers persisted in creating during the years of gunfire, and under the pressure of insufficient funds and manpower, finally launched the first animated feature film in Asia in 1941, "The Princess of the Iron Fan".
The animation tells the story of Sun Wukong San borrowing a banana fan, using the Bull Demon King as a metaphor for the invaders, and inspiring Chinese's will to resist by finally defeating the Bull Demon King and successfully fanning out the fire.
▲The GIF comes from the cartoon "Iron Fan Princess"
This is the patriotic way of animators, and the paintbrush is the weapon.
"Iron Fan Princess" was both a box office and word-of-mouth harvest, although it was withdrawn after a few days of release in Japan, it profoundly influenced the author of "Astro Boy" and later the animation master Osamu Tezuka.
▲ Osamu Tezuka pays homage to Mannori in an anime adapted from his own painting
At that time, most of the Chinese animation was not for children, and in that era when the country would not be a country, there would be no food and clothing, and the education and service for future generations would be doomed to be shelved, and the top priority was to save the spiritual world of adults.
Chinese animation uses a wild imagination, carries humanity and blood, blends traditional mythological stories, digs deep into classic literary works, and reveals China's self-improvement character and wind bones from the inside out.
The founding of New China is in ruins to be rebuilt. In the 1940s and 1950s, the output of domestic animation was extremely low, and it was still in the transition stage of talent training, experience accumulation and technical exploration. The theme began to serve children and teenagers - finally there is a peaceful environment that allows people to spend some effort to water the flowers of the motherland.
For example, "Kitten Fishing" is used to warn children not to be half-hearted; "Little Hero" is used to tell the story of small animals uniting and fighting hungry wolves, and "Xiaomei's Dream" is used to teach children to cherish toys.
▲The picture comes from the cartoon "Xiaomei's Dream"
In view of the friendly relations between our country and the Soviet Union at that time, the animation style was mainly based on imitating the Soviet Union.
After Winning the award for China's first color animation film "Why the Crow is Black" with the Soviet painting style, the art group suddenly woke up and formally proposed the creative direction of "exploring the national style", absorbed many national traditional visual arts, and made a number of works that are still the best works in the history of Chinese art films, and their reputation at home and abroad has risen.
▲The picture comes from the cartoon "Why the Crow is Black"
The boss of the Wan brothers, Wangu Toad, absorbed the artistic characteristics of Chinese folk shadow puppetry, northern paper-cutting, and window flowers, and directed China's first color paper-cut animation film "Eight Commandments of Pigs EatIng Watermelon".
▲The GIF is derived from the cartoon "Pig Eight Commandments Eat Watermelon"
Paper-cut animation is a kind of puppet animation, which lacks a three-dimensional sense, but has a unique charm. The joints of the characters can be moved, but they will not be loosened, this is because the joints are glued with a special glue made by the United States Factory, there is no elasticity, and the concave shape can be done without moving.
▲ Cartoon "Pig Eight Commandments Eat Watermelon" paper cut
At this stage, China's original animation has developed in a spurt, trying rich materials such as origami, paper-cutting, bamboo, cloth, ceramics, etc., proposing and practicing different forms and styles, and the creativity is unprecedentedly powerful.
In 1960, Chinese animation created a new process of ink animation as never before, combining elegant Chinese ink painting with animation films to form an artistic style with the most Chinese characteristics. The world-renowned "Little Tadpole Finds Mother" and "Mudi", which won the highest international honor, are examples of success.
▲The GIF comes from the cartoon "Little Tadpole Finds Mother"
Ink animation once became the first secret of the Chinese animation industry, and many people thought it was really drawn on rice paper.
In fact, each brushwork used in the animation will be made into a seal, and these seals will be stamped out one by one when "drawing", ensuring that the same stroke is exactly the same in the animation. It is then layered, shot individually, and the image is bokehed by multiple exposures. Different degrees of virtual and real superposition, the final formation of the effect of ink painting.
Chinese accomplished a technical miracle with tedious labor, and it is said that the Japanese finally learned how to make it, but gave up because the workload was too large.
We seem to be born with the cultural gene of excellence, do not fall in the face of difficulties, do not shrink back in the face of twists and turns, do things persistently, do not fear hardships, so we are often good at creating miracles.
In 1961, Wan Liming, one of the Wan brothers, finally fulfilled his long-cherished wish of twenty years, producing the golden sign in the history of Chinese animation - "The Great Haunting of the Heavenly Palace" (upper and lower sets), and established the status of "Journey to the West" as the number one IP in China.
▲ Poster of the cartoon "The Haunting of the Heavenly Palace"
The drawing method of "Haunting the Heavenly Palace" is the most common "single-line flat painting" in animation, that is, using lines to outline the image of people or objects on paper, and then through the "line drawing" process, the lines are copied to the transparent celluloid sheet (a transparent plastic sheet), and then filled with a variety of single colors, and finally synthesized with the background to show a complete picture.
In this way, the background does not have to be repeatedly drawn on each piece of animation paper, which greatly reduces the workload and is suitable for large-scale animation production. Finally, the finished product is filmed and recorded on film with a frame-by-frame camera, forming an animation film.
▲The GIF is derived from the cartoon "Big Trouble in the Heavenly Palace"
In order to get close to the Chinese national aesthetic, Wan Liming and his team also visited gardens and temples around the world to collect murals, statues and architectural materials; learn from folk monkey plays and various Peking Opera repertoire; specially inspect temples around the country to find the prototypes of many gods and immortals in the film; and also draw nutrients from art forms such as paper-cutting, carving, hand shadows, woodcuts, and New Year paintings.
The entire film of "The Haunting of heavenly palaces" has a thick 12 copies, a total of more than 70,000 pages, and it takes up two years of drawing alone. The scene where Sun Wukong plucks out his hair and does not part his body is screened for only four or five seconds, but the drawings are more than 100.
▲ "Big Trouble Heavenly Palace" original comic group work photos
(Photo courtesy of Yan Dingxian in 1962)
On the day of the screening, listening to the sonorous gongs and drums and watching the great sage who soared through the clouds and driving the fog, the 64-year-old wan Liming at the time wept excitedly: "Sun Wukong, we finally met!" ”
▲ Wan Liming and the students
This is a true portrayal of the long quest of the first batch of Chinese animators. And like many other ethnic industries in the early stage of social development at that time, in their own barren fields, shouldered the common mission of carrying forward Chinese culture.
After the glory of "The Haunting of the Heavenly Palace", due to the social background at that time, the good development momentum of Chinese animation was interrupted, and only a dozen were produced in ten years, and they were all victims of "political commander-in-chief".
In 1977, When the chaos was rectified, Chinese animation quickly recovered, bursting out of the long-suppressed desire to create, and successively produced many classics such as "Nezha Noisy Sea", "Snow Child", "Three Monks", "Nine Colored Deer" and so on.
▲The GIF is derived from the cartoon "Nine Colored Deer"
Unfortunately, the good times were not long, and in the 1980s, a large amount of capital poured into China, and foundries were set up to produce foreign animation, and the high salaries given made a large number of animation talents in the system. In addition, with the popularity of television, television animation began to flourish, and the state-owned factories that originally produced "high-quality movies" were gradually thrown off by the times.
In the 1990s, the era of animation planning economy came to an end, and since then, art films have faced the market, and the creative system established by the older generation of animators has completely collapsed.
The "processing wave" did provide a reserve army for the rise of today's national comics, but in the ten years at that time, the originality of Chinese animation suffered unprecedented damage, coupled with the fact that the Chinese people at that time recognized the huge economic gap between China and foreign countries, lost their self-confidence in national culture, and admired the foreign world, which made the "Chinese School" national painting style that was hard to find and continue completely broken.
The domestic animation that was seriously injured has since lost a whole generation of audiences. Those children who have watched "Black Cat Sheriff" and "Hulu Brothers" are finally attracted by "Robot Cat", "Football Kid", "One Piece", and learn how to chase dreams, guard friendships, and withstand setbacks from there.
▲The picture comes from the cartoon "Robot Cat"
However, the spirit of not accepting defeat has always been buried in the bones of Chinese animators, who are always holding on to a momentum and always waiting for an opportunity to rebuild their glory.
In 2015, after the unremitting efforts of animators, a phenomenon-level domestic animation film finally appeared - "The Return of the Great Sage", which took eight years and swept nearly 1 billion box office, injecting confidence into Chinese animation.
▲The picture comes from the animated movie "The Return of the Great Sage"
What is even more surprising is that "The Return of the Great Sage" is an awakening of traditional culture and national aesthetics, and the blood and fire points are no longer simply imitating the United States and Japan, but through the Gong and Drum Points of Peking Opera and various ethnic instruments, with the Chinese martial arts moves to promote the climax.
The journey to the west series that we are familiar with has appeared in front of the Chinese people in a new form and once again touched the public.
"The Return of the Great Sage" has been followed by excellent works that are regarded as "the rise of national comics", such as the beautiful "Big Fish and Begonias", the absurd "Great Protector", and the highly completed "White Snake: Origins". They not only absorb foreign advanced technology, but also embody the charm and aesthetic conception of Chinese style.
▲ The picture comes from the animated movie "White Snake: Origins" stills
In 2019, Yang Yu (Dumpling), who was born in the University of Medicine, used a "Devil Child of Nezha" to pull the ceiling of domestic animation films to a height of 5 billion, opening a new stage of modern domestic animation films.
From the Great Sage to Nezha, traditional imagery has always flowed in the blood of Chinese audiences, waiting for the moment of being awakened. Therefore, the market for domestic IP is very broad - under the soil of Chinese culture, as long as the theme is well excavated, coupled with the technical level to catch up and do not pull across, the audience's expectation value is full of minutes, and it will never be stingy with ticket money.
▲The picture comes from the animated movie "Nezha's Demon Child Descending"
Chinese animation has been floating and sinking for a hundred years, and after experiencing artillery fire and catastrophe, it has finally ushered in the dawn of revival.
But there are also many viewers who are soberly aware that the overly stunning results may be due to too bad circumstances. Because the garden has decayed for too long, it is rare for a flower to bloom, no matter how it blooms, it will always attract all the bees and butterflies.
Some people have proposed that in recent years, domestic animation has returned to "adultization", but the word "adult" refers to the picture, not to the connotation. The work pursues the spectacle of fighting, and the core of the story is thinner than that of Pleasant Goat and Bald Head.
Some people commented that "The Return of the Great Sage", "Big Fish and Begonias", and "The Great Protector" are well-made, but only the shell is good-looking, the plot has no beginning and no tail, the people are flattened and labeled, and they have never been able to carry out more in-depth, adult-like thinking.
Animation costs are indeed very high, and it is difficult to make a profit, for example, a seasonal animation film is about 200 minutes, the cost is 10 million, and the possibility of recovering the cost is very small in the current model of free broadcasting of television stations and networks; the cost of animation films is higher, an investment of tens of millions, and the box office breaks through 100 million to make a profit, which is rare in the current domestic animation films.
But not having money is by no means a fig leaf for not being able to do good content.
This is also very much related to the cultivation of talents in Chinese animation - there are too few compound talents with story originality, artistry and technical ability, and domestic art academies cannot cultivate animation leaders who have both ideals and souls - this is the biggest problem in existence.
▲Beijing Film Academy, Animation Academy
But under this situation, there are also many people with animation dreams who try to recreate the glory of Chinese animation. They are not only mining traditional IP with Chinese characteristics, but also continue to create more original stories and form IP in the new era.
We firmly believe that Chinese culture is inclusive and inclusive, and when we integrate the cultures of China and the West, and improve technology through learning and innovation, the excellent animation works that belong to the Chinese will inevitably go to the world again.
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