Style combination · Contrasts
Chinese National-Style Animation × Zagreb School of Animated Film
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.
Mix them and make something Chinese National-Style Animation Zagreb School of Animated Film
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) Zagreb School of Animated Film
- Type from Zagreb School of Animated Film
- Colour from Zagreb School of Animated Film
- 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 · Zagreb School of Animated Film
Wow
Londrina Solid, standing in for Hand-drawn title lettering (made part of the picture: the multicoloured, swelling capitals arched on stalks over the professor on the Profesor Baltazar title card, 1967-1978)
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 Zagreb School of Animated Film, 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) Zagreb School of Animated Film
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#c4c0bbground · 36% -
#1c1b1bink · 14% -
#cc2a2eaccent · 18% -
#55a9c4accent · 14% -
#2e5d57accent · 10% -
#5a4535accent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #c4c0bb;
--ink: #1c1b1b;
--accent-1: #cc2a2e;
--accent-2: #55a9c4;
--accent-3: #2e5d57;
--accent-4: #5a4535;
--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.
Zagreb School of Animated Film: The films and their characters remain in copyright and are distributed by Zagreb Film, whose logo is a horse: borrow the method (a flat caricature, an empty or textured field, a row of identical men), never a particular character, film or the horse logo, and never present a generated image as a Zagreb Film work. Made in a state-funded studio of socialist Yugoslavia, these films were, as historians read them, neither dissident nor propaganda: do not recast them as either, and do not dress a design in red stars, party slogans or leader portraits as period decor.
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.
- 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.
- UPA & Cartoon Modern Contrasts · 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.
- 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 Zagreb School of Animated Film
- UPA & Cartoon Modern Contrasts · The nearest genome and its American parent: Zagreb's founders learned from UPA's flat caricatures, stripped sets and limited movement. But UPA lays its colour on one clean, flat field and pokes gentle fun at American folkways, while Zagreb sets its figures on tinted, often muted grounds of sponged, washed or canvas-textured paint, collages cut-out planes and photographs (even filmed children, in Igra), lines identical men up in rows against one small man, and turns the gag into an absurd, often dark fable of mass society.
- Polish Poster School Pairs well · Both built one absurd visual idea under state patronage in the same years; pair a Polish-style painted, hand-lettered metaphor with Zagreb's flat caricatures and empty fields for a film or festival poster.
- Risograph & Indie Print Culture Pairs well · Riso's flat spot inks and speckled texture reproduce Zagreb's flat cut-out figures over a textured ground, which suits small-run posters, zines and picture books.
- Corporate Memphis Contrasts · Both draw flat, distorted figures, but Corporate Memphis is smooth, faceless and earnest on a clean field; Zagreb caricatures faces, roughens the ground and turns the figure into a satirical small man.
- Thaw Modernism (Soviet and Czechoslovak) Contrasts · Its Soviet and Czechoslovak contemporary shares the flat figures, the reduced set and work for animation, but prints clear pastels on a light ground in a mood of civic, Sputnik-age optimism. Zagreb sets its figures on tinted, often textured grounds and aims satire at technology, war and bureaucracy.
- Flash Vector Cartoon (Newgrounds-Era Web Animation) Contrasts · Textured, earthy, modernist art-house shorts against the even strokes, gradients and portal irreverence of Flash.
- Zagreb Modernist Graphics (EXAT 51 to Teatar &TD) Pairs well · The same city and years, with EXAT's Vlado Kristl and Aleksandar Srnec working on Zagreb Film cartoons; set a flat, satirical Zagreb-school figure against a grid of repeated units or letters for a festival poster.