Visual Language Of Animation

Animation has developed from the single form of game at the beginning into one of themost fascinating art forms of human beings. It has acquired its own history, language, classicand masters, and transformed from the small-scale culture for children to the large-scaleculture, which suits the tastes of both young and old, as well as refined and popular. Alongwith the development of science and technology, the production of animation has broken outthe traditional means by adopting more and more the keep-pace-with-time technologies.Today’s animation does not only stand for personal entertainment, which is in pursuit of purity,personality and romance, but also plays an increasingly important role in the realm ofideology and culture. Therefore, it becomes very meaningful to study the unique language ofanimation.Besides the combing of the development of animation, this article deals with thecomparison and analysis between the western animation products and the Chinese ones,trying to summarize and analyze the methods of production and presentation from differentangles, such as visual language theory and rhetoric conception.The article consists of four parts:The first part is mainly to arrange the times background and the technical developmentprocess of animation development and to re-furnish its historical footsteps; Also, it tries toclarify the definition of animation, and compare the artistic presenting method in animationwith rhetorical method in literature to explain the conception of animation rhetoric as well asits importance in the animation production.The second part describes that the strong artistic presentation and expression in animationstem from the gradual advancement of science and technology, which exerts the animationproducer’s imagination to the most. Animation does not only serve as one of the indispensableways of personality presentation and popular entertainment, but also plays as a medium forthe spread of culture and knowledge. The third part is mainly about the animation coloration, which melts the character andscenery together into one part, and the usage of multi-coloration to describe the structuresystem of story. The color of base and scene, clothes of character are all used to express thevisual beauty of animation image, and to depict the emotional feeling of character and thestyle of animation.The forth part is about the Post-modernism Characteristics in Animation.The developmentof science and technology has changed the values and living ways of people. The changes onthe culture of society have been accelerated by the popularity of media, especially the network.Along with the boom of mass culture, the elite culture in the society is undergoing themarginalization. Therefore, the animation products produced under this general backgroundare also endowed with the color of post-modernism.