Guochuang animation collection “Capsule Project” poster
Deng Yueying
Guochuang’s animation series “China’s Strange Tan” has eight episodes online, and the number of broadcasts on station B has exceeded 200 million. This also led to the popularity of the Guochuang animation collection “Capsule Project” that was broadcast earlier, and the Guochuang animation’s out of the circle caused heated discussions.
“The Summer of Little Monsters” at the beginning of “Chinese Strange Tan” has gained a lot of recognition for its “taste of Chinese books” and “fellows” of Journey to the West. The second episode “Goose Goose Goose” is adapted from the famous short story “Yangxian Scholar” in ancient times. The pictures and stories are meaningful and have received high praise and comments. The third episode “Lin Lin” has the visual sense of stop-motion animation in the past, and the soundtrack is exquisite. It can be called the 3D version of the “Chinese School”. “Capsule Project” has more than ten episodes, with various forms of expression. Like “Love, Death and Robots” produced by Netflix, it brings a strong impact with fragmentation, excitement and openness. Among them, sci-fi works such as “Ultimate Experience” and “Boundary” are not contrary to the “Love Crash” series, and some ideas have more local characteristics and freshness.
With the emergence of “China Strange Tan” and “Capsule Project”, the audience of the works has expanded to audiences of different needs and ages, and the comments are different. There are enthusiastic praises for creativity and Chinese style expression, as well as confusion due to the difficulty and obscurity of the works; there is even a lack of criticism, such as parents complaining that cartoons scare children to tears, this is not animation at all. The outing of Guochuang Animation has triggered our deeper thinking about animation and Chinese animation.
What is animation?
The new look of the current animation greatly breaks through the existing old template
First of all, we must think about a basic question, how should the current animation be positioned?
We usually have some fixed templates: For example, we think that animation is an artistic and educational work for children. Take the classic films of the Chinese school of animation as an example. This is still the animation concept of many parents; animation is often regarded as full of entertainment and Commercial type works, such as Hollywood animation and Japanese animation; experienced audiences will also like some experimental animations with artistic exploration, such as short films such as “Employed Life” and “Ice Cube Merchant”. However, with the advent of the era of networking and video, the new form of animation has greatly broken through the existing old template and is moving towards diversity. “Chinese Strange Tan” focuses on the exploration of the national character of animation, and tries its best to highlight the “Chinese style” in the picture, soundtrack, and story. “Capsule Project” is self-narrated with emotional elements as the motif, and encourages unrestrained experimental exploration. Whether it is “China Strange Tan” or “Capsule Project”, each episode is as differentiated as possible in terms of form and content: in terms of style, whether it is local Chinese style or Japanese manga, Hollywood and other exotic styles, a hundred flowers bloom; technically, There are both 2D hand-painted styles and a large number of 3D effects, which can be exhausted; in terms of content, myths and legends, fables and metaphors, daily life, psychological suspense, technology and social criticism are all available. These explorations echo the general trend of contemporary animation development. Animation is becoming more and more diverse. It has various flavors and multi-level subdivisions, finely covers audiences of different ages, and strives to meet the huge differences in individual preferences.
This can also understand some parents’ complaints about “Chinese Strange Story”. Seeing the language, calligraphy and painting style of “Little Monster’s Summer”, they may conclude that this is a traditional animation suitable for children to watch, but they did not expect it to be so different. “Havoc in Heaven”, behind this work is the nonsense of “A Chinese Journey to the West” and the criticism of the novel “The Legend of Wukong”. Our understanding of animation can no longer be limited by past experiences and stereotypes. Contemporary animation should not be a simple branch of film, animation is gradually growing into an independent art category with rich content and various forms of expression.
What is Chinese animation?
Ethnic elements are naturally embedded in different levels of works
This time Guochuang animation went out of the circle, and it also caused a common confusion among the audience: why can’t Chinese animation be understood? This even inspired some viewers to keep replaying and discussing it.
The direct reason for the confusion is that “China Strange Tan” and “Capsule Project” are generally a collection of short animation experiments. Create novel expression and rich meaning in minutes or so. In order to achieve this goal, each episode boldly uses various elements in different levels of creation mode, theme, genre, form, content, style, technology, etc.: there is the painting style of the Chinese school, there is also the reproduction of Chinese contemporary style, there is the popular There are also references to European art, cool 3D special effects like “Avatar”, and the natural feelings of Japanese animation. All kinds of mash-ups make the audience feel wonderful, but they can’t tell why. “China Strange Tan” and “Capsule Project” are different from traditional commercial animation feature films. Unity and patterning are no longer the principles of creation. Each episode is unrelated in terms of skills, style, plot, world view, etc., and is an independent animation. s work. However, if we watch from the perspective of independent art short films, we will find that each episode is not independent enough: some are not complete, such as “Ultimate Experience” of “Capsule Project”; “The Country Bus Takes the King and the Immortals Away”. Is this a shortcoming of the work? Or is there another meaning?
Compared with the “cultural fast food” of traditional commercial animation, this kind of diverse collection is more like a box of jelly beans with mixed flavors, each of which has a unique and distinctive taste. Unexpectedness and richness are stimulating. To create a sense of stimulation, it is necessary to widen the gap with the old taste and familiar style. The greater the difference, the stronger the stimulation. In order to create a fast and strong impact, the short films in the collection often make the most of familiar patterns, trigger a sense of substitution, deliberately evoke specific psychological expectations, add meaning to the work or create reverse surprises. Just as “The Summer of Little Monsters” created several reversals in a short space, the biggest reversal is the Chinese school-style beautiful mythical world that contrasts the embarrassing real story. In this model, the meaning of the work is not limited to the short film itself, but also depends on the “intertextuality” between the same series of works and even works outside the series.
“Intertextuality”, also known as “intertextuality”, was originally a semiotic concept exploring the meaning of texts. Semioticians such as Barthes emphasize that “text” actually has the meaning of “woven fabric”, and the meaning of a text not only depends on itself, but is also related to other texts. Animation is a complex structure composed of images, shots, stories, etc., and involves many art categories such as painting, music, and film. Its intertextuality is particularly prominent, not only the reference or influence relationship between two texts, but also the layers Nested networks. Each episode of “China Strange Story” may seem fragmented and not new, but the whole series has something in common, that is, it strives to use different expressions to speak “China”, and at the same time combines the Chinese-style imaginary world with cross-cultural animation. The world is connected: Maybe the fairy who left on the bus in “Country Bus” and the monster friend who disappeared in “Natsume’s Book of Friends” quietly took away the pastoral dream of modern people? The short animation that looks like a “capsule” is actually like a network port. Through it, the audience logs in the hypertext link and enters the “Fantastic Story” that transcends reality and history in a changeable context. In the face of contemporary animation, it is difficult for us to understand the source of a certain style and plot through detailed research. Only by placing the work in a wider text network can we understand it thoroughly.
Against this background, let’s think about the enduring question: What exactly is Chinese animation? Where will Chinese animation go from here?
In the current text network of animation, the meaning of the works is more complex, and the nationalities of animation in various countries are no longer as clearly recognizable as in the past, and they are all exploring mutual reference and integration. Judging from the current practice of Guochuang, the national elements of Chinese animation have begun to be naturally embedded in different levels of various works; correspondingly, the focus of audience evaluation has become more diverse, and they are no longer obsessed with defining works based on nationality. Looking back on history, the predecessors of the Chinese school of animation have also been exploring how to surpass themselves. “The Book of Heaven” was called a “rebellious” work at that time. On the basis of maintaining Chinese style art, it tried to enhance entertainment and let the villain become a part of the scene. The protagonist, who does not avoid the deceit and heaviness of the adult world, is even dubbed “the shadow of childhood” by a generation. The treasures left by the Chinese school of animation will never go out of date, but this is not the only nutrition of Chinese animation. Excellent Guochuang animation walks between tradition and modernity, local and global, elements and structure. In addition to the exploration of “China Strange Tan” and “Capsule Project”, various national creations such as “Five Elements in the Fog Mountain” and “Assassin Wu Liuqi” are making new attempts.
However, it should also be noted that the experience of short animation films cannot be transferred to feature films, and open texts are not necessarily better than complete and self-consistent works. The new exploration is not to replace the old model, but to expand the text network , enrich the category of animation. The troubles of Chinese animation in the past may be the current advantages. Without the constraints of mature templates, it is more likely to create a rich and diverse animation future, which is infinitely expected.
(The author is a doctor of aesthetics from Renmin University of China and a doctor of modern Chinese studies from Aichi University in Japan)
[
责编：张晓荣 ]