Style combination · Contrasts

Chinese National-Style Animation × Socialist Realist Propaganda Poster

Made in the same state and decades, and like it an official art: the national style was pursued with state backing and its fables carried lessons. But where socialist realism pictured idealised heroes in legible, illusionistic realism, the studio found its forms in ink painting, cut paper, opera and murals; set one against the other to separate a painted, traditional idiom from heroic realism.

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

Mix them and make something Chinese National-Style Animation Socialist Realist Propaganda Poster

A stylised woman in blue, red and flowing yellow clothing leaps diagonally upward, reaching toward a large orange-yellow sun. Red ribbons and curling blue cloud trails surround her beneath the headline “BRIGHTER TOMORROW” on a cream background. — AI-generated by Stylogeny from the recipe below, and checked against it: the type from Socialist Realist Propaganda Poster, the form from Chinese National-Style Animation, the composition from Chinese National-Style Animation. Not a real or historical work.

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 National-Style Animation (Shanghai Animation Film Studio) Socialist Realist Propaganda Poster

Type from Socialist Realist Propaganda Poster: Hand-lettering
All caps
Colour from Socialist Realist Propaganda Poster: Full polychrome
Gradients
Form from Chinese National-Style Animation: Stylised figuration
Biomorphic curves
Composition from Chinese National-Style Animation: Generous white space
Isolated object
Surface from Chinese National-Style Animation: Painterly brushwork
Flat

The type

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

Display · Socialist Realist Propaganda Poster

Square

Big Shoulders, standing in for Hand-drawn Cyrillic poster capitals in condensed grotesque and slab forms

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 Socialist Realist Propaganda Poster, with a counter-accent from Chinese National-Style Animation. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Chinese National-Style Animation (Shanghai Animation Film Studio) Socialist Realist Propaganda Poster

#f3e8d2 ground · 36%
#1d1d1b ink · 14%
#f2c230 accent · 18%
#c8102e accent · 14%
#b5651d accent · 10%
#2f5f8a accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f3e8d2;
  --ink: #1d1d1b;
  --accent-1: #f2c230;
  --accent-2: #c8102e;
  --accent-3: #b5651d;
  --accent-4: #2f5f8a;
  --font-display: "Big Shoulders", sans-serif;
  --font-text: "Zen Maru Gothic", sans-serif;
}

Use it with care

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.