Style combination · Pairs well

Chinese Calligraphy × Chinese National-Style Animation

A brush-written title and a red seal sit naturally on a frame of graded ink and empty paper, as on the paintings the ink-wash films animate.

From the research on Chinese National-Style Animation (Shanghai Animation Film Studio)

Mix them and make something Chinese Calligraphy Chinese National-Style Animation

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Chinese National-Style Animation, their arrangement from Chinese National-Style Animation, the finish from Chinese Calligraphy. Not a real work, and not an image of either style.

What each style brings

Each part of the design comes from the style with the stronger say in it, and each style gives at least two.

Chinese Calligraphy & Seal Carving (Shufa & Zhuanke) Chinese National-Style Animation (Shanghai Animation Film Studio)

Type from Chinese Calligraphy: Brush & pen calligraphy
Rotated & vertical setting
Colour from Chinese Calligraphy: Monochrome
Limited spot colours
Form from Chinese National-Style Animation: Stylised figuration
Biomorphic curves
Composition from Chinese National-Style Animation: Generous white space
Isolated object
Surface from Chinese Calligraphy: Painterly brushwork
Carved line

The type

Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.

Display · Chinese Calligraphy

Calm

Shippori Mincho, standing in for Regular script (kaishu) after Ouyang Xun and Yan Zhenqing (the 'Yan style', Yanti)

Text · Chinese National-Style Animation

The 'national style' of the Shanghai Animation Film Studio, which turned from Disney and Soviet models to Chinese media: Peking-opera masks and movement, paper-cut and folded-paper figures, mural and New Year print colour and, from 1960, ink-wash painting set in motion after Qi Baishi and Li Keran. Graded ink on empty paper, flat outlined figures over painted grounds and brush-written titles carried fables and myths, from Havoc in Heaven (1961-1964) to Feeling from Mountain and Water (1988).

Zen Maru Gothic; Chinese National-Style Animation used Running-script brush calligraphy for main titles and Regular-script brush calligraphy for credits, written in black on pale paper

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Chinese Calligraphy, with a counter-accent from Chinese National-Style Animation. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Chinese Calligraphy & Seal Carving (Shufa & Zhuanke) Chinese National-Style Animation (Shanghai Animation Film Studio)

#f2ebdc ground · 36%
#151311 ink · 14%
#b8282e accent · 18%
#e3bb3a accent · 14%
#d8c7a0 accent · 10%
#5e5a55 accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f2ebdc;
  --ink: #151311;
  --accent-1: #b8282e;
  --accent-2: #e3bb3a;
  --accent-3: #d8c7a0;
  --accent-4: #5e5a55;
  --font-display: "Shippori Mincho", serif;
  --font-text: "Zen Maru Gothic", sans-serif;
}

Use it with care

Chinese Calligraphy & Seal Carving (Shufa & Zhuanke): Chinese calligraphy and seal engraving are living arts, inscribed on UNESCO's Representative List in 2009 and passed on from master to apprentice, so commission or credit calligraphers and seal carvers rather than tracing their hands, and never present generated writing as the work of a named master. Japanese shodō and Korean seoye grew from this root but are distinct living traditions with their own masters; do not label them Chinese or use this entry as a stand-in for them. Have every character written or checked by a fluent reader: image models produce pseudo-characters, and mirrored, reversed or wrongly ordered characters read as nonsense (the upside-down 福 posted at the New Year is a deliberate exception). A seal is a personal signature and is still used on official documents, so never make a seal bearing a real person's or institution's name without their consent, never copy a historical collector's or emperor's seal onto new work, and remember the seal face is cut in reverse so that the impression reads correctly. Never write a living person's name in red ink, a traditional taboo that marks the condemned and the dead. Buddhist sutras and other devotional texts written as calligraphy should not be cropped into texture or put on floors and throwaway items.

Chinese National-Style Animation (Shanghai Animation Film Studio): The films and their character designs, from Zhang Guangyu's Monkey King to Zhang Ding's Nezha, are the work of named designers at a studio that survives as Shanghai Animation Film Studio Co., Ltd. and still exhibits them: borrow the method (graded ink on empty paper, a jointed paper figure, an opera-mask face), never copy a particular character, and never present a generated image as a studio film. The paper-cut films drew on a living folk craft and shadow theatre, so credit those traditions and their makers rather than treating them as free motifs. Opera-mask colours and patterns mark particular character types, so do not paint them onto real people or ethnic groups as caricature. The national style was itself pursued with state backing (a vice premier proposed animating Qi Baishi, and Nezha was made for the People's Republic's thirtieth anniversary), and the studio also made didactic and political films; in the Cultural Revolution its classics were denounced as 'poisonous weeds' and its artists, Te Wei among them, imprisoned or sent to the countryside. Do not present the films as propaganda or as apolitical folk art, and do not dress a design in revolutionary slogans as period decor.

The two styles

Two large black brush-calligraphy characters, 清風, are stacked vertically on textured cream paper. A small red rectangular seal with stylized characters sits to the left.

c. 0–present · East Asia Chinese Calligraphy & Seal Carving (Shufa & Zhuanke) The written art of China and the root of East Asian lettering. A soft, pointed brush writes ink characters in vertical columns read right to left; pressure swells and thins each stroke, and a drying brush breaks into 'flying white'. Five script families run from even seal script to cursive so fast it becomes gesture. In literati work the only colour is the red seal, cut in stone, on pale paper or silk; at the New Year the brush writes couplets and 福 in black or gold on red paper. Carved in steles and plaques, the writing returns as white-on-black rubbings and signboards over doors and shops.

A girl in red and blue clothing stands beside a golden spotted deer on a rocky cliff, looking toward three flying birds. Pine branches and red blossoms frame a misty mountain-and-river landscape beneath the red brush-lettered title “Morning Spring.”

1956–1989 · East Asia Chinese National-Style Animation (Shanghai Animation Film Studio) The 'national style' of the Shanghai Animation Film Studio, which turned from Disney and Soviet models to Chinese media: Peking-opera masks and movement, paper-cut and folded-paper figures, mural and New Year print colour and, from 1960, ink-wash painting set in motion after Qi Baishi and Li Keran. Graded ink on empty paper, flat outlined figures over painted grounds and brush-written titles carried fables and myths, from Havoc in Heaven (1961-1964) to Feeling from Mountain and Water (1988).

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