Classic Ink Animation 1960-1988:Chinese traditional Aesthetics and Animation Design

Abstract

Classic ink animation films were produced in China from the 1960s to the 1980s, filmed and produced by the Shanghai Fine Arts Film Studio, and are a new form of animation art created by Chinese animation artists. During the period from 1960 to 1988, according to the classification of animation forms, they can be divided into five basic types: traditional hand-drawn animation, ink animation, puppet animation, paper-cut animation, and origami animation, among which the ink animation form is the most capable of reflecting the social aesthetics, natural aesthetics, technological aesthetics, and artistic aesthetics of traditional Chinese aesthetics, as well as the innovation and expression of animation design.

During this period, a total of four classic ink animations were produced, including "Tadpole’s Look for their Mother", "Shepherd's Flute", "Lu Ling" and "Feelings of Mountains and Waters". The classic ink animations used Chinese ink painting techniques as the means of expression for character modeling and environment space modeling, and used special processing techniques for animation filming to shoot down the images and backgrounds of the ink paintings one by one, thus forming the animation film of the artistic ink paintings in the form of thick and thin, virtual and real activities. Although the number of classic ink animation is very small, it has created a new form of animation with unique characteristics. Classic ink animation in the imaginary and real mood and light and elegant picture, not only make the cartoon art style has a significant breakthrough, but also the Chinese animation art of national style pushed to a new peak, in the world of animation history is also a major initiative, its emergence, laying down the status of Chinese animation in the international arena. The creation of classic ink animation film is not the credit of a certain person, but the product of the hard work of many animation artists under the background of a specific era. The production of classic ink animation is the result of Chinese animation artists exploring the road of nationalization under the condition of the era of technological progress.

Classic ink animation is an animation art that is very closely integrated with science and technology, involving artistic disciplines such as film art, literary art, music art, painting art, and computer simulation technology, sound, light, electricity and other composite technical disciplines. In the audience's first impression, classic ink animation is an art form with strong technical factors. It is meaningless to talk about the artistry and technology of classic ink animation only unilaterally. Even in the context of the current concept of art creation, the technology itself will be thought of as artistry, and the issue of aesthetic value has always occupied the dominant significance, which is also the technical beauty in the aesthetic value.

The study of Chinese traditional aesthetics and animation design of classic Chinese ink animation is necessary and in line with international research trends. The main research concepts are: traditional Chinese aesthetics and animation design. In addition to the main research concepts, there are some sub-research concepts in this thesis which help to explain the research questions in more depth, i.e., multicultural study of classic ink animation and animation symbol study.

In order to achieve the set objectives, this paper uses qualitative research methods. During the research process, the following methods were used in this paper: survey and field method, historical and logical method, analysis and synthesis method.

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