Which anime has other anime characters?

Although it is an article in a 3D tutorial, I think it is very enlightening for animation design, because the original painter should not only be able to draw, but also know the performance and use of the lens very well, so as to create new things.

[Transferred from: Audio-visual Language Course, 3D Course (Digital Design)]

Reread "Hypothesis"

Studying the film language of animation is a profound understanding of the connotation of the beauty of animation art and a rediscovery of the expressive potential of animation art, just as Mr. Li Zehou said, the course of beauty points to the future. However, it seems difficult to analyze the language of animated films in all directions, because it carries too much "history". First of all, the essence and fundamental feature of animation is the foothold of studying its language. However, over the years, we have obviously misunderstood the fundamental characteristics of the so-called "high hypothesis" in comics. Secondly, the existing film language composition system is attached to feature films. If this film language is used completely, it is tantamount to feminist film criticism entering the misunderstanding of androgyny aesthetics. Thirdly, if we use structural semiotics as a methodology to study the film language of cartoons from the perspective of images, we will face the distinction between commercial films (Hollywood and Japan) and artistic films (Canada, Europe, etc.). ), and different readers may have completely different conclusions, because in the field of comics, the difference between commercial films and art films seems to be even greater, and even some are incompatible. Finally, even if Hollywood blockbusters are chosen as reading objects, the attempt to build a unique film language system for commercial cartoons is still full of fog. Disney and DreamWorks animation blockbusters, at least in personality, depth of field, authenticity of details, color texture, three-dimensional scene application, etc., are still very different so far. It is not easy to decide who can better reflect the character and development direction of contemporary animation.

Nevertheless, because the systematic composition of cartoon film language is the core and foundation of animation theory and even animation history theory, the author tries to make a preliminary discussion here. The author is concerned about the expansion, extension or rewriting of the functions of film language components in regular feature films in cartoons, the resurrection and rebirth of extinct, dead and never-used techniques, and the displacement of the original comprehensive elements (music and dance) due to different viewing mechanisms of cartoons, different expectations of audiences and the convenience of animation production process. The author's reading object is not a complex text group, but only a masterpiece of DreamWorks, The Prince of Egypt, and a masterpiece of Disney, Hercules, which only involves the film language analysis of commercial cartoons. Among them, the prince of Egypt is the title, and Hercules is the antithesis. Through the analysis of many film language elements, this paper expounds the brand-new animation concept and production experience of DreamWorks, and then explains the formation of contemporary animation character. And this character is the best footnote of the basic characteristics of animation.

Corresponding to the crux of the above problems and the idea of discourse construction, it is the premise of research to study the fundamental characteristics of comics, that is, to clarify the "highly hypothetical" understanding of comics in traditional concepts. One of the core propositions of art research is the relationship between art and reality. Cartoons have similar external forms because of the basic isomorphism between their artistic language and feature films, but their relationship with reality is quite different. The generation mechanism of feature films depends on the existence of cameras, which is what Bazin said, "getting rid of human intervention for the first time"; Compared with traditional art, the documentary nature of cameras makes movies as close to reality as possible. The generation mechanism of cartoons only depends on a piece of white paper and a brush, and has developed into a computer in recent years. This essentially deviates from the essence of film authenticity in the traditional sense (more accurately, the film here should only refer to feature films); This is also the reason why sadoul said in The History of World Movies that cartoons and feature films should be the relationship between architecture and sculpture. If we understand the so-called "high hypothesis" from the point that there is no video record of cartoons, no one will put cartoons into the cold palace of low-level art forms such as naive themes, bizarre plots and exaggerated characters. However, the "height assumption" in this sense obviously can't be the basic feature of cartoons, which is only the most obvious feature that distinguishes it from feature films: because of this "height assumption", the functions of traditional audio-visual elements have been "deformed" more or less, and it has also had a specific psychological impact on the audience's expected vision. In the following, the author tries to discuss how the "high hypothesis" exists in the text and viewing mechanism of cartoons through the analysis of lighting elements, motion elements and sound elements.

1. Lighting.

In cartoons, lighting can be subjective, imposed or even "arbitrary" modeling elements: lighting conditions in scenes and even shots can be changed. In the mirror language system of The Prince of Egypt, there are many scenes where the lights are not uniform. For example, in the lens 1 in the opening paragraph, the shadow of Pharaoh's head in the background is very deep, which is an obvious overhead effect; But in lens 2, the light effect is bright, and it is obviously impossible to have the top light source of the previous lens. For another example, when my sister met Moses, the whole scene was cold blue, but when my sister sang a lullaby, my sister in the camera suddenly appeared in a warm light; When Moses rushed back to the palace on the cold road, he suddenly stopped at the pillar and began to sing a monologue. Subjective sudden light hits his face to describe the psychology of the characters at this time. This illogical and subjective lighting treatment, if used in feature films, will not only make the audience feel false, but also technically difficult to achieve. However, due to the advantages of animation technology, this sudden change of lighting can be easily realized. More importantly, the real and rich light and shadow effects in The Prince of Egypt are also very different from traditional Disney blockbusters, which invisibly weakens the influence of two-dimensional and tends to be three-dimensional. In contrast, Hercules of Disney is much inferior. The only scene in the film where the lights suddenly change is the one sung by the Muse, and generally only the warm tone changes to the cold tone; The lighting factor is still a secondary element in Disney, which cannot be compared with its pivotal position in feature films. This also means that Disney comics gave up one of the most valuable modeling elements. It is precisely because of this that the subjective changes of lighting that frequently appear in The Prince of Egypt have more pioneering aesthetic significance.

2. Exercise.

With the development of three-dimensional animation technology, animation movement is getting closer to the real world, and at the same time, it breaks the limitation of feature film movement because of its unparalleled technical conditions. The motion of the lens and the motion of the object in the lens are infinite. The most obvious is the camera flying action widely used in The Prince of Egypt. The virtual camera can fly freely in the scene, walk through the smoke, and even change the focal length constantly during the movement (for example, the mural lens inserted in the scene of the brother racetrack in The Prince of Egypt). Its movement track is beyond the reach of feature films, and it is a surreal exaggerated movement with strong assumptions. Not only the dynamic range of the camera is particularly large, but also the motion of the subject in the composition is hypothetical and surreal, which can be seen from the walking posture before and after Moses killed the supervisor.

A more obvious example of the superiority of technical means in sports is to pull the lens. In "The Prince of Egypt and Hercules", there are many rapid and continuous shots in a few frames, which reveal a new space and cause an abrupt feeling. This kind of movement is difficult to realize in the actual shooting of feature films, but it can be easily realized in the production of cartoons through two-dimensional or three-dimensional animation software and later nonlinear editing. The maturity of technology has brought new expressive force to the traditional film language elements. In contrast, Disney, represented by Hercules, once again showed its conservatism. Although, as mentioned above, Heracles' mirror language system has many new skills, such as rapidly and continuously pulling the lens within several frames and changing the scene by flipping the lens 360 degrees (for example, Effie taught Heracles to learn archery), these sports skills are still limited to the concept of two-dimensional animation, and there is no complicated flying action of three-dimensional scenes as the Egyptian prince does, so there is no new exploration on the language potential of animated films.

3. Narrator and monologue

If the singing of the muse in Hercules is a narrative technique that plays the role of separation and narration at the same time, then the singing in The Prince of Egypt is completely equivalent to narration, with an omniscient perspective, which not only has the function of separation and narration, but also is hidden in the overall narrative. This narration singing method, because it is in tune with the overall musical sound style of cartoons, not only does not interrupt the thinking and emotion of watching movies, but revives the narration that is almost dead in contemporary feature films, and then becomes an advanced form of alienation. The monologue singing of the characters in the film undoubtedly plays the role of narration, ellipsis and psychological expression, but the deeper significance lies in the fact that the singing of the characters has successfully transplanted and reborn the dramatic monologue in the classic drama. Those long monologues, like Hamlet and King Lear in Shakespeare's works, are not only unpretentious and abrupt under the packaging of singing form, but also complement the whole musical narrative and the sound style of the whole film. Animation revives narrative and monologue by promoting the position of its musical elements in audio-visual works; More precisely, it adds an artistic expression element to the film, which has long existed in the ancient drama tradition, but it is difficult to survive in traditional feature films. Its root lies in the poetic style of comics as a whole and the assumptions implied in the audience's expectation field of vision.

Ⅱ. Comics: Language Reading

If "high hypothesis" is the most obvious feature that distinguishes cartoons from feature films, then "the visual nature of movement" is one aspect of its isomorphism with feature films. "Moving image" is another viewpoint about the basic characteristics of animation. Its starting point is the language composition and space-time structure of animation, which is a generalization in the ontological sense, and can better reflect the character and direction of contemporary animation than "high hypothesis". However, the specific explanation of the so-called "visual essence of movement" and its relationship with the "high hypothesis" has always been a theoretical blank. This paper attempts to explore the connotation and aesthetic significance of "the vision of movement" by using the above-mentioned language component analysis and comparative research methods.

1. clip.

Compared with conventional feature films, animation clips pursue visual rhythm montage more. For example, the camera rhythm in the first paragraph of The Prince of Egypt is as strong and accurate as music. The length ratio from lens 1 to lens 5 is synchronized with the music rhythm, forming a real visual rhythm. The moving-static-moving emotional clues, fast-slow-fast editing rhythm of the whole horse racing paragraph also form a smooth montage with music. But what deserves more attention in editing is many editing ideas and image forms that conventional feature films can't reach.

Transitional skills

The most obvious difference between animation editing and feature film editing should be the richness of transition skills. There is a passage in "Hercules" that tells the story of Hercules' fame through the singing of the muse, and uses many transitional ways that are rarely used in regular feature films, such as paddling left and right, Z-axis flip, 360-degree flip up and down, clock rotation, picture-in-picture with borders, three-dimensional DVE and so on. On the one hand, it comes from the rich transition skills of nonlinear editors, on the other hand, it has obvious tendency of variety style. Another commonly used transition technique in the film is to superimpose the gray bitmap on the trophy with the color bitmap of the real scene, thus transforming the singing narrative into an objective narrative.

After my sister watched Little Moses Entering the Palace, a group of meaningful positive and negative shots revealed the most prominent performance of the animation hypothesis. In a over-the-shoulder shot, my sister watched the princess pick up Moses and pushed the camera up to become the R side of the R/SR system. Then she hit her sister back. She sings to express her feelings. The narrative space here is extremely hypothetical and logically untenable in reality. Hollywood classic feature films aim to sew the audience into a closed and seemingly real mythological space. Here, on the contrary, the hypothesis of constantly exposing space. In fact, it is not the sister, but the author, who has the right to speak. This deconstruction and rewriting of the positive and negative lens functions based on the assumption in the mechanism of watching cartoons is more characteristic of modern movies.

1. Vaudeville montage and surrealism

Juggling montage is no longer possible in regular feature films after Eisenstein, and animation, because of its assumed style and acceptance psychology, may revive juggling montage on the whole, at least in paragraphs. The prince of Egypt provides us with an example. After Moses returned to the palace, the performances of the two priests were classic montages of modern vaudeville. All kinds of irrelevant statues, strange symbols, light and shadow smoke are cut together at an increasing speed. These isolated shots have irrational significance through abrupt movements, sudden tone sandhi and exaggerated modeling conflicts, and are more mysterious in incantation music. Similarly, because of the uniqueness of its production and viewing mechanism, animated films still have the possibility of reviving paragraph narratives such as surrealism and psychoanalysis that have long disappeared in conventional feature films. The Dream of Moses is a colorful passage in The Prince of Egypt, which is obviously influenced by bunuel and Freud. Entering dreams from reality is achieved by pushing the lens, deepening the light and shadow, changing the tone to orange, and deforming the eyes. When you open your eyes, it becomes a relief effect with a strong sense of concavity and convexity. Continuous skipping rope, camera flipping, using corners to enhance the three-dimensional scheduling, using mapped characters to move from top to bottom to play dimensional games, resulting in a strange impression of mixed dimensions. Surreal red color blocks, soldiers' map-like movements and jumping movements all create a magical psychological reality.

2. Role-building.

In traditional feature films, role modeling is not a single modeling element, one part is dissolved in the composition, the other part is dissolved in the actor's performance, and it is not an integral part of audio-visual language. In cartoons, because there are no real actors, the role modeling is independent and becomes an independent language component.

Traditional Disney blockbusters not only perfect the hero and heroine (conceptualize at the same time), humanize the beast (Beauty and the Beast), but even strive for standards and ideals in details, which has entered an increasingly narrow and rigid cycle. It was not until Tarzan of the Apes that the trend of personalized development began to appear. For example, the hands of apes began to look angular and sometimes even very ugly. But the Egyptian prince is bolder and more determined than Tarzan, Mulan and even Hercules in character modeling. For example, in the first paragraph of the opening paragraph, the exaggerated bony skull-like hands and weird twisting movements of the fallen old man appear in the close-up backlight, deliberately highlighting personality and special cases. This kind of modeling is a powerful proof that it is different from the traditional Disney blockbuster detail modeling. In order to pursue "abnormality", explore the characters' personalities in specific situations and get rid of conceptualization, the Egyptian prince did not hesitate to "uglify" the characters, deform the details and even geometrize the faces of the main characters. The women in the film all have geometric features in modeling. A mother with a long face, a long nose and a short chin, and Sapula with a high forehead, diamond eyes, a big nose and high cheekbones are simply worlds apart from traditional Disney beauties. But when we saw Sapula's angry look back in that blue tone, we saw a kind heroine's devilish anti-traditional style, as well as her personality and psychology in a specific situation. The same is true of Moses and Remins, such as their unusually long noses, pointed chins and one-sided pigtails. In addition, the shape of characters is constantly changing with the changes of personality and psychology. When Moses was hiding in the desert, his face was sharper, his eyes were bigger and rounder, and his eyes often turned around. There was no neck in many shots, and the most obvious thing was the change of his hair and clothes. These shapes correspond to the specific psychology of the characters. And when Moses was shouldering the mission of God to save the common people, his modeling became more and more like a saint. On the contrary, Remins lost his innocence as a teenager and looked more like a cruel soldier-the author often highlighted his bald head. At the same time, the Egyptian prince still retains many classic Disney modeling traditions, such as a fat and thin priest who wriggles around like a dancer, much like a muse dancer in Hercules and a soldier in Mulan. The fat priest's shape and movements, even the lines of his hands' movements, are pyramid-shaped. In addition, the shapes of animals such as camels and donkeys can also be found in classic Disney.

Although the role modeling in Hercules pays attention to the personality of the hero and heroine, different expressions change with the rich situation, frequent use of colors and modeling contrast (such as the modeling of Cadiz and his two men), and inherits Disney's penetrating use of animals (such as horses, donkeys and Effie, who is half man and half sheep), even in Hercules, it is still difficult to get rid of the model of strong men and beautiful women. Of course, the reason is not only the influence of traditional modeling concepts, but also narrative and its cultural significance. Taking the female role as an example, the female in Hercules is the focus of the binary struggle of project establishment, and exists as the object and object of desire in the animal model; The women in The Prince of Egypt are no longer angels or witches or a combination of the two, but personalized people. In the sense of drama, it no longer exists as an object, but becomes a dispensable foil. -Even if the role of Sapula is completely deleted, it will not affect the progress of the main line. It is this role orientation that makes Sapula more likely to develop in the direction of personalization and humanization, and also determines that the role modeling of the Egyptian prince has developed to a brand-new stage in the history of animation.

3. Depth of field.

Throughout The Prince of Egypt, the relationship between the depth of field of foreground and background has become a common pursuit. Because traditional animation is mainly based on two-dimensional painting, it has gradually formed the characteristics of paying attention to foreground expression and lacking depth of field in aesthetic concept, and also caused many defects such as monotonous light and shadow effect and insufficient texture. The background of many scenes in classic Disney blockbusters is completely composed of color blocks, such as the lavender sky, the scene of Mount Olympus and the design of the halo around the characters, which often appear in Hercules. Without hierarchy, although it can form a unique style of two-dimensional animation and has certain artistic effects, it is far from the real space after all. DreamWorks' The Prince of Egypt only pursues a depth-of-field relationship with a strong three-dimensional sense. This is not only a breakthrough in using 2D renderer in 3D animation software, but also an aesthetic innovation. The first paragraph is proof. From the elevation angle of the first panorama, this arrangement of foreground and background is very obvious. Smoke rises in the foreground with a three-dimensional Pharaoh's head in the background. In traditional Disney, most or even the main characters are angular; In The Prince of Egypt, even the statues in the background are so angular. Coupled with the three-dimensional shadows caused by lighting effects and the rich texture of smoke and head, the image style and form of The Prince of Egypt are very different from Disney. In the action shot behind this paragraph, the change and richness of this depth of field level is more prominent. On the one hand, large scrolls and complex long shots completely show the empty background from a big angle, making the composition contrast and color contrast more obvious; On the other hand, the scheduling of the triple depth of field relationship is almost universal: often the backstage supervisor is backlighting, many of them work in the middle, and the backstage is a huge head; And the light processing of triple depth of field is completely different. Another strategy to create a three-dimensional sense in this section is to enrich the depth of field continuously during the duration of a shot, and generate new foreground objects by entering and leaving the picture, which not only reveals the existence of the space outside the picture, but also turns the original foreground into the background, making the visual center constantly shift. For example, the head or hoe of a slave worker or supervisor suddenly enters the right side of the picture, which suddenly changes the depth of field of the picture; In the panorama, Pharaoh's head moved, the camera shook down and a new prospect appeared. The slaves crossed the camera, and then an old man fell to the ground, and he became a new prospect. But the most significant thing is that the slaves working in the foreground, after virtual focusing, are quickly pulled and combined to show a new prospect-another group of slaves carrying heavy objects, and completely cover or replace the original prospect. This common method of revealing the background in Hitchcock's films was hardly seen in previous ordinary commercial cartoons. The depth of field treatment of The Prince of Egypt shows the formation of a brand-new animation concept and production experience, that is, to bid farewell to Disney's two-dimensional scene, to stay away from the assumption of height, which is absolutely different from the reality of feature films, and to maintain its own unique image tension in a wandering and attachment.

4. Farewell.

The types of scenes in cartoons are not richer than those in feature films, but they have unique advantages in the application of large scenes. In feature films, aerial photography is often needed, but in the process of making cartoons, it is no different from shooting middle scenes or close shots. In The Prince of Egypt, Moses ran back to the palace at night in the panoramic view of the angle-bending lens, which made people feel visually shocked. However, more noteworthy is the close-up. Due to the convenience of technical means-changing the background and changing the details of the material-the close-ups in cartoons are more meaningful than feature films in repeating the fixed elements of montage, and the contrast of local close-ups is more powerful and prominent than feature films in depicting characters, revealing psychology and promoting plots. For example, in The Prince of Egypt, the close-up of the mother's finger leaving Moses' finger, a scene with strong symbolic significance, first appeared in the impressionist painting-like animation, but it was a relief jump in a dream when it appeared repeatedly. In addition, close-ups can better express the factors of dance in comics. The close-up of mother's tears is "the close-up of dance". Hair, headscarves, tears and light are all dancing. Repeating my sister's tears is exactly the same sense of flow and dance. As for the three repeated ring close-ups, they play the role of narrative nodes and personality milestones in the classical narrative principles.

5. deformation.

Deformation cannot be juxtaposed with the above-mentioned audio-visual elements, and it is not an independent expression element, but it is a unique modeling means of animation. Due to the lack of three-dimensional deformation technology, at least so far, two-dimensional deformation has incomparable performance potential and superiority. Perhaps because of this, the prince of Egypt is far inferior to Hercules in the use of this expressive element. The two-dimensional deformation of the latter has started from the opening paragraph of the first goddess singing, and the ring belt on the trophy has become a ladder; Then, whether Cadiz's face changes, the shape changes of Cadiz's two monsters, or the deformation of objects in the scene (such as the collapse and deformation recovery of a pillar on Mount Olympus), the experience and tradition of Disney animation are permeated.

Animation Features and Digital Revolution

The interpretation of The Prince of Egypt in this paper shows that cartoons have changed and extended the functions of many audio-visual elements of traditional feature films, such as the arbitrariness of lighting, the infinity of movement, the close-up of scenery, the role of positive and negative shots, the modeling of characters and the exaggeration of performance. I see that cartoons weaken the rationality, authenticity and subjective selectivity of feature film narration (for example, Moses confirmed his identity through a stranger's words, a dream and a group of murals, and Pharaoh did not know when he knew Moses' psychological changes and took the initiative to comfort him); I have seen the revival and rebirth of many technologies that have been extinct or died or never used in conventional feature films: narrative, monologue, vaudeville montage, surrealism and the use of dramatic lyrics (including flashbacks of Japanese Miyazaki Hayao); I also saw the position of the comprehensive elements of the original feature film move forward: music and dance highlight themselves everywhere in cartoons. The intersection of all these and feature films lies in the language characteristics of animation "moving images", and the rewriting, extension and appearance of its functions are due to the psychological "high hypothesis" and the superiority of technical conditions in animation production and viewing. In my opinion, the basic feature of animation should be such a multi-level definition: on the basis of technical means, it combines video and high assumption of motion. ```

At the same time, another frame of reference of the current hot theoretical topic-about the aesthetic influence and change brought by the digital technology revolution to the traditional film language-has also been quietly drawn. Due to the language innovation of many cartoon films analyzed in this paper, the function extension of traditional film audio-visual elements due to the superiority of technical conditions can also be realized in regular feature films through digital technology, thus revolutionizing the aesthetic significance of audio-visual elements such as lighting, action and scenery, just like the previous two technological revolutions (sound and color). However, this is a topic outside this article and needs to be discussed in detail in another article.

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