What is the name of China’s first animated film? What year was it produced?

China's first animated film "Havoc in the Studio".

"Havoc in the Studio" is a 1926 cartoon directed by Wan Gu Chan, with dubbing by the Wan brothers, and produced by the Great Wall Picture Company. The video shows a painter painting in his studio. Suddenly, a little man in Chinese clothes that the painter drew jumped out of the drawing board. He was naughty and funny and caused a lot of trouble for the painter. Finally, after a chase and fight, the little man was driven back into the painting.

Behind the scenes production

The film uses a production method that combines real people and animation. In the film, the painter is played by Wan Guchan, and the small paper figures are drawn with animation. Many problems occurred during the drawing, which were solved one by one by the Wan brothers. For example, there is a scene in the film where little paper figures are fighting. It is shown that the fighting movements of the little paper figures are motionless, but things that should not be moving, such as the clock on the wall and the table in the studio, are moving instead.

After repeated trials, they finally figured out how to use celluloid copies, that is, draw everything that should be moved on transparent celluloid, and draw the background that should not be moved on paper. , and then stacked up and shot frame by frame to make the film a success.

As early as 1919 to 1922, when the Wan brothers came to the Shanghai Commercial Press from their hometown of Nanjing to work in art, they had the idea of ????moving Chinese landscape paintings. They watched cartoons drawn by brothers Max Fornecker, an American animation artist.

With animation technology and materials strictly blocked by European and American animation manufacturers, they converted their 7-square-meter house into a studio for drawing, printing, and screening. They used the money they saved by cutting back on clothing and food to buy an animation studio. Old cameras converted into video cameras.

Based on experience gained from hundreds of failed experiments, in 1926, he successfully developed China’s first animated film, "Da Nao Studio", in the pavilion where he lived in Sanfengli, Tiantong'an Road, Zhabei, Shanghai. .