Brief introduction of ink animation

It can be regarded as a great innovation of China animation. It introduces China traditional ink painting into animation production, and makes a great breakthrough in the artistic style of animation with its illusory artistic conception and light and elegant picture. 1960, Shanghai Meiying Factory filmed a short film called "Ink Animation Break" as an experiment. In the same year, the first ink cartoon "Little Tadpole Looking for Mom" was born, and the animal shapes in the cartoon were taken from Qi Baishi's works. The film caused a sensation all over the world as soon as it was released.

Different from ordinary cartoons, ink animation has no outline, ink is naturally rendered on rice paper, and every scene is an excellent ink painting. The movements and expressions of the characters are beautiful and smart, the background of the splash-ink landscape is bold and magnificent, and the feminine style is full of poetry. It embodies the aesthetics of "similarity and dissimilarity" in Chinese painting and has a far-reaching artistic conception.

Due to layered rendering and coloring, the production process is very complicated, and a short film consumes a lot of time and manpower, which is amazing. Meiying Factory has invested heavily in ink and wash films, and its production team is extremely strong. Besides Tewei, Qian Jiajun and other animation masters of the older generation, even China famous painters Li Keran and Cheng Shifa have also participated in art direction. It is precisely because of this artistic pursuit that Chinese ink animation has won praise internationally. No country dares to compete patiently with China people, and Japanese animation circles even call it a "miracle". However, it is precisely because of the separation of artistic value and commercial value that ink animation is facing an unsustainable embarrassment.

It is worth mentioning that "Wan Brothers" contributed to China's early cartoons, and China's first animated feature film "Princess Iron Fan" produced by Wan Laiming was reported. Let's briefly introduce Wan Laiming's younger brother Wan Guchan. We have seen many newspaper clippings of Chinese mainland from the videotape. Tracing back to the source, the founder of newspaper clippings is Wangu Zen, who is revered as "Long Live 2000". After many experiments, Wan Guchan successfully shot the first color paper-cut in 1958, which is different from the long-standing black silhouette paper-cut comics in the West. Subsequent films such as Fisherman, Jigong Fighting Cricket and Golden Conch have matured their skills. Wan Guchan and his creative partners absorbed the artistic features of Chinese shadow play and folk window grilles, and let various types of paper-cut figures or animals convey their joys and sorrows on the screen, some of which are antique and some are lifelike. At the joints of paper-cut figures (animals), connect them with thin copper wires or small sticky particles scraped from the glue of billiards bat, and then put them in front of the camera to shoot one by one. Of course, there are also some clips shot by cartoon animation, such as goldfish swimming, the softening of fishermen's nets and the shaking of the protagonist's head. Take goldfish swimming as an example. Tail movements that flutter like veils have to be replaced by animation clips painted on celluloid, but the drawing method still uses strong paper-cut lines to avoid obvious differences between the scenes replaced by animation and those of paper-cutting. In 1980s, a new paper-cutting process of "napping" was tried out in paper-cutting, and an ink-and-wash paper-cutting named "Snakes and Clams Struggle" appeared. The process of "napping" makes the coir and the feathers of the snipe worn by fishermen in "Fighting for Mussels" directly produce the effect of ink smudging, and the process of retouching is relatively simple, which is not as complicated as taking ink cartoons. Later, even the characteristics of feather craft painting were quoted by paper-cutting. Attaching feathers to paper-cut birds was both decorative and realistic, which made the grass man made by 1985 well received.

The production cost of paper-cut is lower than that of comics, but the disadvantage is that the expression of paper-cut is not as flexible as that of comics, and its movements have many limitations. When the movements and angles of the paper-cut characters in one shot need to be greatly changed, we can only rely on the next shot, but when the movements and angles of the characters in the next shot need to be changed, we have to rely on the next shot ... So, we kept cutting and drawing, and a small paper clip was photographed. I wonder how many people will be laid off. No matter how you cut and draw, it is still difficult to avoid the shortcoming that characters keep the same angle for a long time, but this shortcoming is also the artistic feature of paper-cutting. Don't some cartoons also pay attention to the "cool" flavor, so that the protagonist can keep an expression or a posture for a long time?

Chinese mainland's puppet films were influenced by eastern European countries in the early days. Any puppet film produced by the Soviet Union must be shown many times in the art film studio as a reference for the works. Even animation students have borrowed Czech puppet films "The Emperor and the Nightingale" and "A Midsummer Night's Dream" from the studio more than once to observe and study. Jin, a famous puppet film director, went to the Czech Republic to study puppet in trenca, movie master in the 1950s. His "Peacock Princess" was shot in 1963, with a duration of 80 minutes, taking the lyric route of trenca. Among them, Nanma Chen Na, the peacock princess, danced farewell to the villagers on the execution ground, which was exquisite and moving enough to represent the level of puppet film's Chinese mainland. Puppets in puppet shows are all fixed with feet nails under their feet. There are silver threads on the limbs made of plastic, and even silver threads run through the five fingers, so that the fingers in the close-up can stretch freely. There are also puppets with wrists, elbows and knee joints that can flexibly replace silver wires, and are also suitable for frame-by-frame shooting. For different expressions, you can only use "head change".

Ink animation is in a very embarrassing situation, because its production process is tedious and time-consuming, but not all animation operations that people understand are completed on rice paper. It is no wonder that Japanese who have mastered ink animation skills don't want to try it easily after returning home. For all western animation producers who pay attention to timeliness, they don't spend so much time decomposing, drawing lines, layering and coloring every picture, and shooting repeatedly and fixedly on the stage. China people are naturally patient. They can carve a Buddha statue on a hair and a scripture on a grain of rice. With the same intention, with the cooperation of so many line-drawing women, color-painting women and animation photographers who never complain, ink-wash cartoons have been created successfully. Mao Dun, Minister of Culture at that time, was very moved, but he also wrote an inscription for Shanghai, "Creating a Scaring Ghost". The shepherd boy in Moody rode an old buffalo dripping with ink through the willows, walked through the rice fields in the sunset and walked to the village. Delicate movements and subtle feelings are completely Chinese cartoons, which are very different from Disney cartoons.