The Legend of Hei (2019) did not begin as a stand-alone animated feature but emerged from The Legend of Luo Xiaohei (罗小黑战记), which is a web animation created by MTJJ that first aired in 2011. By the time the animation…
The development of early Chinese animation is closely intertwined with China’s cultural policy, political movements, and educational initiatives, and cannot be fully understood without situating it in the historical and social context of the Republican era. This text explores how…
Daisy Yan Du, Animated Encounters: Transnational Movements of Chinese Animation, 1940s-1970s. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2019: 276 pp.: ISBN 978 0 8248 7210 6, $90.00 (hbk); $30.00 (pbk). In Animated Encounters: Transnational Movements of Chinese Animation, 1940s-1970s, Daisy Yan…
In this post, I illustrate how the early Chinese ink painting animation showed oriental aesthetics, conveying implicit and meaningful emotions. It was closely related to the traditional Chinese ink painting and reflected the unique philosophical concept of the Chinese ancients:…
Review of Daisy Yan Du. Animated Encounters: Transnational Movements of Chinese Animation 1940s-1970s. University of Hawai’i Press, 2019. Daisy Yan Du’s excellent Animated Encounters: Transnational Movements of Chinese Animation 1940s-1970s is essential reading for anyone interested in Chinese or Japanese…
Created during the height of the Second Sino-Japanese War, Tiě shàn gōngzhǔ (Princess Iron Fan, 1941, by Wan Guchan and Wan Laiming) was the first full-length animated feature film made in China, as well as the first in Asia. Princess Iron…
Generally speaking animated filmmaking is gendered. Men usually work as directors, key animators, and photographers, while women take less important roles such as inkers and painters—jobs that demand repetitive and tedious manual labor rather than artistic creativity and high technology.…
