Style combination · Contrasts
Chinese National-Style Animation × UPA
Both flattened the cartoon in the 1950s, but UPA took its flat colour and caricature from modern painting, while Shanghai took flatness from cut paper and murals and atmosphere from graded ink washes.
Mix them and make something Chinese National-Style Animation UPA
01
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) UPA & Cartoon Modern
- Type from UPA
- Colour from UPA
- Form from Chinese National-Style Animation
- Composition from Chinese National-Style Animation
- Surface from Chinese National-Style Animation
02
The type
Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.
Display · UPA
Hello
Londrina Solid, standing in for Playful hand-drawn cartoon lettering (the hand lettering of mid-century American advertising, after 1920s and 1930s comics and newspaper cartoons, which animation title designers set apart as a design element; carried on by Phil Norman's titles and credits for UPA in the early 1960s)
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
03
The colours
The ground and leading colours come from UPA, 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) UPA & Cartoon Modern
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#1c1c1cground · 36% -
#f1e8d2ink · 14% -
#d8a32baccent · 18% -
#d6482caccent · 14% -
#2e8c87accent · 10% -
#e893a4accent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #1c1c1c;
--ink: #f1e8d2;
--accent-1: #d8a32b;
--accent-2: #d6482c;
--accent-3: #2e8c87;
--accent-4: #e893a4;
--font-display: "Londrina Solid", cursive;
--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.
UPA & Cartoon Modern: Mr. Magoo and Gerald McBoing-Boing are still licensed characters, and the films are not free to copy. Borrow the method (a flat field, a caricature, colour slipping off the line), never the characters, and do not present new work as a UPA film. Leave out the Asian caricature of Magoo's houseboy Charlie, which was dropped in the late 1960s, and gags that mock disability: blind and low-vision groups, including the National Federation of the Blind, protested the 1997 Magoo film.
04
The two styles
05
More combinations
With Chinese National-Style Animation
- Socialist Realist Propaganda Poster Contrasts · 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.
- Zagreb School of Animated Film Contrasts · Its contemporary among state-funded animation schools: both broke with Disney's full animation and staged short fables in flat figures and empty fields. Zagreb reduces its small men to geometric caricature for ironic satire of mass society; Shanghai takes its figures from ink painting, opera, paper-cut and murals and tells gentle fables and myths.
- Lianhuanhua Picture-Story Books Contrasts · Its printed contemporary: both told myths and fables, the Monkey King among them, to a mass audience under the same state, but the palm-sized picture-story books drew in black ink line, one framed picture to a page with a caption, while the studio moved painted and cut-paper figures over empty grounds with few or no words.
- Guochao (China-Chic National Trend) Pairs well · For China-chic packaging and campaigns, borrow the method (an opera-mask face, scrolling clouds, an ink wash on empty paper) rather than quoting the studio's licensed characters.
- Chinese Calligraphy & Seal Carving (Shufa & Zhuanke) Pairs well · 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.
With UPA
- Push Pin Style Contrasts · Its New York contemporary shared UPA's comic, distorted figures and irony but went the opposite way on ornament: Push Pin piled on revived Victorian and Art Nouveau lettering, borders and ornament, while UPA stripped the picture to a figure, a line and a flat field.
- Ligne Claire (Franco-Belgian Clear Line) Contrasts · Both draw cartoon characters in a clean line with flat colour, but the clear line closes every contour exactly and sets its figures in researched, deep, realistic streets. UPA often lets the colour slip off the line and erases the setting down to a single shade or tilts it into skewed perspective.
- American Mid-Century Modernism Pairs well · Its print parent: Alvin Lustig drew UPA's logo. Both use flat colour, simple shapes and visual wit. Add UPA's caricatured characters and stripped sets to a Rand- or Lustig-style layout when an idea needs a cast of people rather than a single symbol.
- Thaw Modernism (Soviet and Czechoslovak) Contrasts · The nearest genome in the atlas, and close kin in animation: critics found that Khitruk's Story of a Crime (1962) looked more like UPA than Disney, and called it a rare example of Soviet cartoon modern design. It shares the limited movement and the set cut down to its props. But Thaw modernism prints a few clear pastel inks on a light ground and aims at civic, Sputnik-age optimism, while UPA sets one or two caricatures on a single, often saturated, flat field, often lets the colour slip off the line and pokes fun at American folkways.
- Corporate Memphis Contrasts · A distant flat-figure descendant: both distort the body over flat colour, but Corporate Memphis is faceless, smooth and earnest. UPA often keeps a drawn line slipping off its colour, caricatures people and their movements, and pokes fun at them.
- Risograph & Indie Print Culture Pairs well · Riso's flat spot inks and loose registration naturally reproduce the divorced line, which suits small-run picture books, posters and zines today.
- Rubber-Hose Revival (Cartoon Mascot Graphics) Contrasts · UPA rejected exactly this: it traded rubbery full movement and round bodies for angular caricature, flat modernist sets and limited animation.
- Flash Vector Cartoon (Newgrounds-Era Web Animation) Contrasts · Same limited-animation logic, but hand-painted, off-register and spare; set against mechanical vector lines and tweened puppets.