The History of Chinese Animation I

Lijun Sun, Lijun Sun

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000740509
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Media Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

China has been one of the first countries to develop its own aesthetic for dynamic images and to create animation films with distinctive characteristics. In recent years, however, and subject to the influence of Western and Japanese animation, the Chinese animation industry has experienced several new stages of development, prompting the question as to where animation in China is heading in the future.

This book describes the history, present and future of China's animation industry. The author divides the business's 95-year history into six periods and analyses each of these from an historical, aesthetic, and artistic perspective. In addition, the book focuses on representative works; themes; directions; artistic styles; techniques; industrial development; government support policies; business models; the nurturing of education and talent; broadcasting systems and animation.

Scholars and students who are interested in the history of Chinese animation will benefit from this book and it will appeal additionally to readers interested in Chinese film studies.

Part I

The embryonic stage and birth of Chinese animation (1920s–1930s)

1 Overview

Chinese people are born with a strong sense of dynamic images. But it takes thousands of years to bring their sense of animation from embryonic stage to birth till maturity. The origin of China’s earliest sense of animation can be traced back to the Stone Age, even before the birth of writing. Those early paintings, such as the rock paintings of Yinshan Mountains in Inner Mongolia during the late Paleolithic Era, the rock paintings of Cangyuan county in Yunnan Province during the Neolithic Era, and the painted pottery basin of Majiayao Culture, reflect our ancestors’ examination and primitive experiments towards “beauty of movement” in a variety of activities. Afterwards, the innovative combination of “image” and “movement” constantly pursued by people has brought us leather-silhouette play, puppetry, hand shadow play, and human shadow play, which were quite popular among the Chinese common people. Among them, the leather-silhouette play developed into an ethnic story telling form with chanting, singing, and dubbing, using stage and light to add atmosphere. It has greatly influenced later forms of animation art in China, and even bred the “paper-cut cartoon.” While the Chinese were still enjoying a variety of visual tricks, daguerreotype, photography, and projection had been invented successively in the 19th-century Europe, leading to a photographic revolution. In 1895, the first public screening of the film clips by French Lumière brothers marked the birth of films. This was a time when capitalism expanded rapidly to the world. The movie, a novel invention in capitalist countries, spread all over the world along with colonial footprints, reaching China the second year (1896) after its birth. Movies were shown by foreigners who came to China. The door to Chinese film-making had not been opened until the shooting of Peking Opera The Battle of Mount Dingjun performed by Tan Xinpei as laodan (old woman) to celebrate his birthday in 1905. It was shot by the Beijing Fengtai Photo Studio. Soon afterwards, those early cinematographic work including the first narrative short film and feature-length film were all published consecutively. Modern cinemas were also built at that time. All these have provided necessary technical support and a favourable environment to the birth of animated movies. The Wan brothers loved dynamic imaging since they were children. It was the inspiration they obtained from films that motivated them to develop Chinese animations. Early animations were often associated with commercials. The first animated advertisement produced by the Wan brothers was Shuzhendong Chinese Typewriter which was made in Shanghai in the 1920’s. Its birth laid a foundation for the production of the first animated short. In 1924, Chinese Film Company produced the animation Dog Treat, while Shanghai Tobacco Company produced New Year. The two were the earliest animated shorts in China. But neither of them had much influence. Inspired by cartoons like Popeye, Betty Boop, and Out of the Inkwell shot by Max Fleischer brothers, the Wan brothers produced Uproar in the Studio which was the first non-commercial Chinese animated short. Since then, the Wan brothers produced A Letter Sent Back in 1927 and Paperman Makes Trouble in 1930. Both cartoons, along with Uproar in the Studio, were considered to be the first three animated films in China. Later, the Wan brothers was lauded as the “fathers of Chinese animation” both in China and in Asia as a whole because they served as the first generation of Chinese animation directors. They not only produced the first animation with sound, titled The Camel’s Dance, after overcoming technical difficulties but also produced the first animated feature film, titled Princess Iron Fan. This ushered modern China into its history of animation.

China’s early animation works draw on various forms of artistic expression and image language. On one hand, traditional Chinese fine-art drawings bring a lot of inspiration to animators on their techniques of expression; on the other hand, the film shooting technology introduced from the West allows animators to learn how to use lens for narration. In the 1920s, Chinese animation had conducted numerous experiments and explorations on its painting and shooting technology. Such explorations mainly focused on the transformation from traditional painting to film painting, forming an animation production system with originality, converging painting, line drawing, colouration, and shooting in one. The artistic style pursued the realism of action and the coherence of movement.

2 The embryonic stage and birth of Chinese animation consciousness

Section 1 The three stages of animation consciousness

Animation emerges along with a long history of culture. From the view of animation history, animation consciousness comes into being even before animation itself, which germinates animation. Our ancestors had developed the animation consciousness long ago. During the archaeological excavations, it was discovered that they had begun to use a variety of paints in the form of painting to record their daily life of production and labour. All the images were drawn with varying degrees of dynamics. From this point, the emergence of animation consciousness could be divided into three stages: embryonic, emergence, and maturity, and ultimately leads to the birth of animation.

1. Embryonic

The first stage is the germination of consciousness, which is mainly embodied in prehistoric paintings and coloured pottery paintings. During this period, human beings had developed somewhat ignorant consciousness towards dynamic images. However, they did not know how to use images to express motion. Instead, they had drawn a few more legs to represent their running.

2. Emergence

The second stage is the emergence of consciousness, which is mainly reflected in the hand shadow performance. Using the simple scientific principles of light and shadow to project dynamic images, humans created illusions of animals, such as pigeons, horses, and dogs, in concert with the ventriloquist performance. A folk-art form thus took shape. The human shadow play appearing later also casted shadows through applying the same principles with lamp and people, along with musical instrument performance, to form various types of song and dance performances. This was one form of the palace performances of ancient China. Though animation consciousness had already appeared in the above-mentioned performances, there were neither characters nor a storyline. Leather-silhouette play and puppetry came into being at almost the same period, and were typical of the emergence of animation consciousness. They assembled elements of dynamic image performance including artificial light, shadow, stage, curtain, dialogue, lines, musical instruments, plot, and character movements. All the elements of a film or animation were ready at this period, but the traditional animation technology and equipment had not been applied yet. This is a detailed manifestation of animation consciousness.

3. Maturity

The third stage is the maturity of animation consciousness. In the late Qing Dynasty (1644–1911), movies used to be quite rare when introduced from the West to China. Early movies had been equipped with all the characteristics gained through the modern scientific exploration on image, as well as with much more matured technical means. At that time, people had developed a sense of movie watching and accepted that they should pay to watch movi...