Research on Ethnic Style of Animation Performance Based on Drama Performance
Dong JiaJia，ChulYoung Choi
Department of Visual Contents
Graduate school, Dongseo University
Busan, South Korea
156857942@qq.com
Abstract
Keywords-standardized action, animation character performance
1. Introduction
The act of combining standardized action as a performance model with the artistic features of animation and applying it to the standardized concept of animation plays an important role in the formation and diversified expression of the performance style of the art movie. The formation of the so-called national style performance is not only reflected in animation technology, movement rules, or a set of standardized actions absorbed from the opera. It is a performance language system accumulated gradually with abundant practice, which is attributed to animation ontology category. The "standardization" is a necessity for art and film performances and a common feature of Chinese art. That is to say, it is not only a simple technical feature, but one of the characteristics of Chinese national thinking.
2. Research on the Art Law of Art Films
2.1. Artistic and narration
Just as its name implies, art films are attributed to films like story films, science and education films and documentary films. It has both the general commonness of the film's comprehensive characteristics and the features of art form. Thanks to the broad application of art forms, it has aesthetically stronger "artistry" than ordinary story films and documentaries. With the help of the comprehensive narrative ability of film language, art breaks away from the limitation of static narrative features or that of association of activity and inertia in the general sense, and the general art works are “more narrative”
2.2. Hypothetical nature and Sense of Reality
An art film is one kind of cinematics which is made by painting or a specific process material. It has inherently great hypothetical nature with false characters and false scenes, and all its elements are hallucination and illusions created by means of artistic expression. The technique, degree, and nature of this hypothetical nature are full of infinite possibilities because of the freedom of the material. All the elements on the screen are simulated by special materials, such as the scene of going up to heaven and down into the earth, endless changes, fireworks, clouds, storms, thunder and lightning. It doesn’t even need live actors to create characters and set scenes with real props, as in the story films. The hypothetical nature of art films achieves unprecedented freedom in means of expression.
2.3. Alienation and Hallucination
The role of art film is not shaped by the actors themselves, so the performance of animation characters enjoys its own unique innate characteristics. When the effect of "alienation” is showed or "illusion" is performed, it is necessary to extract the essence and discard the dross according to its aesthetic standards. It is obviously not advisable to draw the performance theory of drama into the performance theory of art films. However, since different performance theories have their advantages, only by combining the aesthetic pursuit of art films can we achieve the purpose of better reference and absorption.
3. Research on standardization
3.1. Type of roles
In order to summarize and refine the actions of different roles, the opera is divided into four categories according to people's status: male roles, female roles, painted roles and clowns-on stage. They represent four different groups of people, which are subdivided into different small groups, such as an actor playing a martial role，an elderly character，a special role of a young gentleman；female role，maidenly female role，the demure middle-aged or young female character type；the painted face playing acrobatic fighting in Chinese operas；military comedian，a kind of comedian，old comedienne，etc. This method of roughly dividing people according to different levels, men and women, occupation, age and other elements can clearly extract the commonness of actions in a certain group of people, and extract representative typical actions as standardized actions. When they are applied to different characters and scenarios, and Standardized actions can produce different changes according to the actor's psychological experience and performance requirements. This division of type of role can be used as a reference for the role classification of art films and form a standardized animation role that can be inherited and developed. This is also consistent with the law of animation art.
3.2. Four Basic Skills and Five Techniques
Chinese opera deduces stories through song and dance. Therefore, it is often said that Chinese opera tell a story by poetic drama and dance. The ancients described the emotional response to a matter as a progressive process, expressing it through speaking part at the beginning, singing when they cannot enjoy it, and dancing when they are not enough to express their inner emotions. It can be seen that song and dance are the most expressive way to express people's feelings, but it is very difficult to tell stories with song and dance. After thousands of years of development, an adequate bonding agent is found between song and dance and stories, which is the standardized action. Therefore, the formation of opera is much later than other traditional Chinese arts. The standardized actions include four basic skills and five techniques
The four basic skills include singing, dialogue, acting and acrobatics. The singing focuses on the rising and falling in cadence. Acting requires actors to act reasonably on the stage with beauty as if it is real, which requires a strict technical system. Dialogue requires not only a reasonable expression but also a "pleasing quality". Acrobatics, also known as acrobatic fighting, is a highly technical skill among the four skills. It is necessary for fighting to make the character's performance incisively and vividly in the fighting plot and make the audience thrilling, as if they were on the battlefield.
Five techniques refer to gestures, eyes, figure, specifications, gait, which are a set of standardized actions for performance with the four basic skills.
The standardized actions of four basic skills and five techniques is a precise movement system which is precipitated by stylized thinking with exaggeration and beauty, as well as the bridge and foundation for actors to shape their roles. The actors mobilize various parts of the body to perform. We need to inherite and improve this set of mature standardized actions, reconstruct and create new standardized actions by combining with the artistic pursuit of animation performance for further development. If animation performance continuously is formed independent system, and shaped with different genres, it will play a significant role in the nationalization development of animation performance.
3.3. “Movements and Postures of Actors in Traditional Operas” and “Every Gesture and Motion”
The standardized action of the opera is composed of the movements and postures, which are formed by linking up the posture with beautiful shape through every gesture and motion. It is consistent with the technical principle that key frames with narrative function link up tween frames to form a set of animation performance actions. While we introduce the posture, attention should be paid to integrating the special time rhythm, exaggeration and other technical factors of animation so that it conforms to the law of animation performance and realize the aesthetic pursuit of animation performance.
4. Conclusion
The aesthetic pursuit of animation performance is very similar to that of traditional opera performance. Many representative works of early Chinese animation have made bold reference and innovation to opera performance in the process of performance of animation characters, and perfect results have been achieved. It will play an important role in the development of Chinese animation to form an independent style by deeply develop opera performance and selectively absorbing and transplanting it theoretically.
References
[1] Research on Art Film Creation, China Film Publishing House, 1st Edition, March 1984.
[2] Research History of Animation in China, Sun Lijun, Commercial Press, 2011.
[3] Introduction to Animation, Nie Xinru, Fudan University Press, 3rd Edition, February 2014.
[4] Research on Chinese Animation Director Creation, China Film Publishing House, February 1, 2016.
[5] Chinese Opera Role Creating Course of Stud, Zhao Jingbo, Culture and Art Publishing House,November 1, 2004.
[6] Four Basic Skills and Five Techniques, Cheng Yanqiu, Beijing Baowentang Bookstore, March 1, 1959.