The influence on animation from the integration of Chinese and western culture
Qian Yang
Art and Design College
Guilin University of Electronic Technology Guilin, Guangxi 541004, China Joyang@yahoo.cn
ZhiYuan Teng
School Of Computer Science and Engineering Guilin University of Electronic Technology Guilin, Guangxi 541004, China Tzy@guet.edu.cn
Abstract—Animation is a common global language. It represents the value of national culture. It may shorten the distance between different countries and it is helpful for frequent exchange between different cultures. Meanwhile, the culture endows animation new responsibility and mission. By analyzing of the gap between Chinese and western cultures, this paper systematically demonstrate that the culture exchange between China and West will bring new effect and development to the animation.
Keywords- Culture,Blend, Animation, conflict, bottleneck
Animation could not only evaluate itself in business issue, but also could express itself with a specific opinion in the field of expressing national or local peculiarity and balancing the people‟s aesthetic characteristics. Animation creation needs great power of conception and antecedence of design. It is based on the culture life of each nation, and thus it is the carrier of culture and art. This indicates that animation has distinctive nationality and it is an industry to demonstrate the development of internationality.
I.
THE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF CULTURE IN
ANIMATION
A. The development of Chinese culture in Animation
Chinese Animation set in during the 1920s. One of the mostly-influential cartoons is the notable long film Princess Iron Fan. By 1960，a new animation style appeared with the combination of traditional Chinese ink painting style and cartoon films, This new style contains most traditional Chinese art characters and the cartoon figures in this style carry on national classical art style. For example, ‘For mothers of small tadpoles’ applied many traditional Chinese paintings
and „The Golden Conch’ used the forms of Chinese shadow-play and the Chinese Paper-cutting. Furthermore, the color used in the animation is also the Chinese traditional color and it represents different meanings. For example, red stands for power, luck and happiness; yellow means noble, lively and bumper harvest. In „The Monkey King’, the main colors used are red and yellow, which incarnates the arrogance and breeziness of the characters. Moreover, there are a lot of source materials for Chinese cartoon creation. Some local cartoons, such as ‘The Lotus Lamp’ which is based on Chinese classical novel, „Incredible Ink ’, which came from a fairy story, and „Three Monks’ , which is adopted from Chinese proverb, are masterpieces of Chinese cultural flavor: B. The development of Western culture in Animation
The American Disney is another name for the western animation. From the popular Mickey mouse and Donald Duck to Impressive seizures of „The Lion King’, American animation has their own unique style and manner. With the change of the time, American animation has also changed in the characteristic form. For example, „Toy Story’ used very advanced software and equipment and its animation images were not formed by the traditional hand-drawn but by the 3D, MAYA and so on. The color in animation is bold and has high saturation and strong visual impact. For example, In „Monsters Inc’ the main character has blue fur with purple dots and other monster is also very colorful. Although every character in the film is very curious and exaggeration in design, you may even know its kindness or wickedness by its colures. Disney animation is usually based on fairy tales and folklore from all over the world. For example, „Sleeping Beauty’ is from „Hans Christian Andersen Fairy Tales’, „Dumbo’ and most other
animations are from the well-known children fairy tales. C Animation development of the culture communion between China and West
After culture communion between China and West, in recent years the western directors like to take use of eastern culture. In 1998, the first animation „Mulan’ which contains Chinese traditional culture by Disney achieved great success. This animation is totally based on a Chinese old story. Although American people hope to make the film a total Chinese style, the American values and thinking way are inevitably put in the animation. However, the American details also add exotic atmosphere to this animation. The integration of Chinese and western culture becomes a very important characteristic in the animation.
DreamWorks‟ film „Kung Fu Panda‟ in 2005 is very funded by Chinese people. The director used many Chinese elements in the animation, such as panda, tortoise, tiger, snake, cranes, monkey and etc. This film is full with oriental gorgeous feeling and strong western humor, with very classical cartoon figure and background. This is due to the good understanding to Chinese culture by the screenwriter and the director. However, very limited eastern cartoon films take use of the western productions, and the fewer is successful. II.
THE CURRENT PROBLEM OF THE ANIMATION WHICH
INVOLVE IN DIFFERENT CULTURE
A. The bottleneck of the traditional Animation in china
The Animation in china used to glorious. However, it fell down to the bottom in the end of 1980s; the main reason can be concluded as follows:
1) Age-lowing trend of the work, lack of originality
from the past ‘For mothers of small tadpoles’to‘Naughty blue kitty 3000 question’, the animations just have educational significance to the children. The story is dull. Many animations use the same story and lack creativity 2) Lack talents in animation industry
The traditional way of education in china has limited the creativity of people to a certain extent. However, the creation of animation can‟t be alive without abundant imagination.
This causes the problems which may restrict the development of animation industry in china: the lack of the original talent in animation industry and the backward mode for talent training. 3) Lack of professional operation
After the production of the animation comes out it can‟t achieve success without professional operation. In many other countries the copyright income takes only 20% in the whole cost of the production. The main profit is mainly from the operation of the animation derivatives in the later stage. However, the situation is not like this in China.
B. The traditional animation problem in western Country 1) Similar ending forms of the stories, most of them are comedies
It can be seen from the Disney traditional productions, such as „Snow White and Seven Dwarfs '. 'The Lion King ', ' 101 Dalmatians ', 'Bolt ' 'Toy Story ', 'Monster Inc', that all of them have a happy ending. None of the endings of the productions is tragedy. So the Audience may know the ending of the story before they finish seeing the whole movie. Neither they can hang people's appetite, nor can they leave people the beauty of pity.
2) Short history, lack of National cultural characteristics
The American has a history of only about 200 years. So its culture, legend and fairy tale are much less than those in China since China have history of over 5000 years. In China there are a lot of ways to manifest ate animation, such as Peking opera, paper-cut, ink painting, paper shadow, etc. There are also a large number of fables, legends folklores. So there are plenty of expression forms and abounding story contents for animations. However, the western animation production takes Disney as their representative. They take use of the legends from different countries and express them with their own Disney style. It seems that the expression in Disney animations has only 2 styles: one is 2d style represented by „The Lion King ', the other is 3d style represented by „Ratatouille ' which has highly real effect
3) The conflict in Animation industry caused by the communication between the culture of western country and china
The Animation industry have developed when the culture of western country and china get involved in the Animation. However it is also bring some problems, especially the conflictions caused by the culture differences. For example, the animation film„Mulan‟ get good respondences in western movie industry. But its modifications in several key culture differences can reflect the culture conflictions between West and China.
First of all, the idea of hierarchy and gender is severe in China. This character can be seen from the figural described. However, the people-oriented idea is prevailing in western country. In order to meet this taste of the people,, the director made some modifications before he take use of the culture of china.
Secondly, the movies in western country, including animation films, are all sparkplugging 'LOVE' through the story. But Chinese people are more conservative in this aspect, so, generally speaking, the key core of the animation film in China movies will be the story scenario instead of 'love'.
Last but not least, the animation films in china emphasize the 'coexistence of human and nature ', emphasize that the nature is holy, inviolable. However, the productions in western animation films like to reflect the individualistic heroism, what a person may overcome all have already become an inveterate idea in western culture.
In conclusion, languages, story scenarios, and art representation forms and so on, all may cause inevitable clashes because of the culture differences between eastern and western countries. This is an important problem to solve for those countries and industries who are intending to speed up the development of animation industry though the blend of different cultures.
III. THE INNOVATION AND INFLUENCE ON ANIMATION FROM THE INTEGRATION OF CHINESE AND WESTERN CULTURE A. Culture integration breaks the bottleneck of the development of local animation 1) Effective measures for breaking the bottleneck to the development of Chinese local animation
First of all, it is crucial to give up the outdated education approaches. In China, the education mode has the technical trend. The skills of using software are taken for standard evaluation. The training bases for animation outside schools, such as Perfect Training and Mars Times, mainly focus on cultivating skilled people, rarely teach or give guidance for ideas. However, in the west, originality is identified as the criteria of assessment while the technical specifics only occupy a small proportion in evaluation. Therefore, we boost that we should care both skills and ideas, that we should communicate much more with each other and make progress together, that we should introduce various teaching materials and efficient facilities.
Secondly, solve the problem of originality by starting from the selection of topic. The script is the soul of a story which exerts direct impact on the popularity of a cartoon. Although most of the animations relate to myths and legends, we can try to make more living scenes to show the modern life. Meanwhile, we can find plenty of inspiration from our daily life and the animation will be created not only for children but also for adults.
Thirdly, only the professional operation can bring us immense \"gold\" wealth. Disneyland is probably the most successful example of the industrialization operation. The Hong Kong Disneyland is the fifth global theme park .People rush to visit it because of the limit for three million visitors, so the spot is always packed with tourists. Therefore, it is prejudiced that the income of animation industry only benefits from of screens. Only by learning the experience of western animation industrial operations can we make substantial development in China.
2) solve problems of western local animation
Disney's „MuLan‟, DreamWorks‟ „Kung Fu Panda‟ had achieved great success which try to integrate the culture of
east and west. Western countries can introduce more Chinese elements, such as Beijing Opera, paper-cuttings etc. New animation can innovate in artistic style, combining the geometric abstraction style of Miaoxiu that comes from GuiZhou province, the straightforward style of wood engraving that are handed down in Hunan province, or elegant style of blue and white porcelain in Jiangxi province. With the high-end technology, as well as Disney's strong animation team, it will certainly shake the world in the near future, affecting the new era of animation. It is expected that western animation could turn the traditional happy ending to sentimental animation, like the Oriental tragedy animation works: miyazaki‟s „Tombstone.For Fireflies‟, „Castle in the Sky’, allowing audiences to enjoy the tragic beauty of tragedy.
B. Innovative cartoon culture, solves the potential conflict of cultural integration in animation
In order to make a groundbreaking progress in the field of animation, to eliminate the conflicts becomes particularly important. So we must pay attention to the existence of these cultural conflicts, which can be overcome by our efforts. Nevertheless, it is not easy to settle the cultural conflicts as they are cultural fusion rather than compromise. Creating a new culture or eliminate cultural conflicts means to create products which are acceptable, feasible, coming up to the laws of culture. Culture should be understand and adapted well by people. Then the new culture could be created, obtaining new vitality and vigor. In view of what mentioned above, there are some workable proposals as following: 1) seek common ground while reserve differences
The cultural conflict of animation between east and west can be eliminating by conforming to the law of “seek common ground while reserve differences”: Search common feelings, cultivating adaptability and compatibility. Only in this way, can we establish positive dialogue mechanism between Chinese and western culture. The parties may understand each other better.
2) take precautions against the assimilation of foreign culture.
On the cartoon market, the proportion of the products from western culture constitute to 66.7%. The series of cartoons which come from Disney account for 50%. Japan, South Korea's animation also entered the international market, and quickly becomes extremely popular. Meanwhile, China's efforts of developing animation industry are noticeable. As the cartoons showing in different areas, various cultures have been spread widely and rapidly. Nowadays, the development of animation should be based on unique culture and aesthetic viewpoint, the target of which is to absorb the essence and to abandon the dregs, creating new cartoons that contain local cartoon‟s national characteristics and features.
3) develop and transcend the cultural of our own while absorb foreign culture.
Disney had achieved a successful step of culture integration. It is of vital value to learn the western concept of accepting different culture with no bias. China's animation industry has fallen behind developed countries in the world therefore original and copy will exist at the same time. „The Magic Aster‟ is a bold attempt that China follows the steps of the world, which is considered as a present for the National Day 60 anniversary, also it has taken example of Disney, inviting stars to dub and adding some details of music and dance that made something fun. „The Magic Aster‟ is not only for young children but also adults. Although the cartoon is not good at the box office, Chinese animation has made the new breakthrough at least and it is worth advocated.
References
[1] J. Feng QI, Yonghong Zhang,“ Contrastive Study between Chinese and
Western Animation Art.” Arts Exploration,2009
[2] J. DongLiang Jia, LinLi, “Cultural integration and collision from movie
Mulan.” Journal of Bohai University(Philosophy & Social Science Edition),2005
[3] J．Dan Luo，“Analysis of the Breakthrough and Inheritance in
China's Animation Creation. ”Art and Design，2009
因篇幅问题不能全部显示，请点此查看更多更全内容