These two volumes explore the possibilities of design and composition for both the animated frame and character. The covered topics provide the reader with a wide scope of artistic options, with each examining the impact on the animated frame. These educational volumes assist the animation artist in making creative choices based on the foundation of design and narrative.
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This article suggests a discussion on the reconfiguration of the 12 principles of animation and their necessary refinement for contemporary animation to address the growing complexity and expansion of the animation industry. The expansion of the 12 principles of animation into the various animation techniques requires a consideration of their development, which, in the 1930s and 1940s was sufficient for animation’s hand-drawn animation needs; since then, the principles have proven themselves accurate and incredibly helpful for subsequent decades. Nevertheless, this article indicates that a refinement of the principles is required to accommodate a broader range of animation techniques. The great advantage of the 12 principles of animation is their simplicity and logic; however, they do not apply in their entirety (as the full set of 12) to hand-drawn digital animation, stop-motion animation, experimental or digitally animated media. Therefore, this article explores the initial 12 principles with additions and variations suggested by artists and scholars over the last 30 years, and concludes with a reorganization and expansion of most of the principles’ content, a breakdown into sub points and an updated terminology to reconceptualize the 12 principles of animation for all animation techniques.
Find out more >The quantity of Chinese animation has increased and will grow further in the years to come; thus, more and more Chinese animation will be seen on cinema- and TV-screens in- and outside of China. Due to the fact that Chinese animation often deals with historical narratives and aesthetics, commonly unknown to the non-Chinese viewer, to appreciate this culturally unique content one must learn about its specific features. Thus, this book project is divided into two volumes, which cover the time frame from 1922 – 1989, mostly dealing with the productions of the Shanghai Animation Film Studio, providing a wide range of information needed to comprehend and recognise the values of the discussed short- and feature films.
Volume one focuses on traditional Chinese culture, its religious, philosophical, and aesthetic influences on the animation production. A key area of this study is the Chinese ink-wash painting style, its stylistic representation and translation into animation. The second volume investigates the revolutionary aspects in Chinese animation and the increase of revolutionary aesthetics through the Great Leap Forward Campaign, until its height during the Cultural Revolution, a period when revolutionary realism and romanticism was pushed to the forefront of highly political and propagandistic films. The aesthetic of revolutionary realism subsided after the death of Mao Ze’dong and more subtle narratives replaced the previous radical communist content.
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