Narrative Strategy Of Folklore-themed Animation Short Films ——Illustrated By Xiao Ming’s Folklore Diary

Folklore is a collective term for the customs,life and culture of the folk people.It is the soul of a country and even a nation,and it plays a unique and vital role in our daily life.Chinese traditional culture continues to improve and develop itself in the long history of five thousand years.Animated short films,a crucial film and television carrier,play a important role.In the era of digital media,the number of folklorethemed animated short films continues to increase with the rise of national calls and creative atmospheres.They enable animated short films to create more narrative imaginations through their rich and colorful folklore culture,and audiences can also gain cultural heritage and confidence in the process of appreciating them.Accordingly,this work explores the narrative art of this type of animation short film by studying the narrative strategy of folklore-themed animated short films and combining with the practical creation of the graduation work Xiao Ming’s Folklore Diary.This research combines animation narrative theory,classic case studies,and graduate work analysis.The introduction part introduces the thesis background,literature review,research methods,and summarizes the narrative characteristics of graduation works.The first chapter summarizes the definition and characteristics of folklore-themed animated short films,and analyzes the narrative strategy and its rationality from three aspects: theme,time and space,and structure.The second chapter discusses the narrative theme of the folklore-themed animated short film,and analyzes the types of narrative theme and how to integrate the folklore theme into the contemporary from the perspective of narrative acceptance.The third chapter analyzes the narrative effect of narrative time and space from the time and space mechanism of animation,and summarizes the characteristics of application combined with editing techniques.The fourth chapter summarizes the narrative structure of animated short films with folklore themes suitable for children’s audience,and expounds the influence of animated short films on the narrative structure due to the restriction of length.The conclusion part clarifies that the creator should use universal narrative thinking,and the comprehensive use of narrative means can maximize the narrative effect.The narrative strategy runs through the two parts of "what story to tell" and "how to tell story",which is the top priority of animation creation.This study integrates the narrative strategies and application forms of folklore-themed animation short films from the perspectives of theory and practice,discusses the narrative strategies in three aspects: narrative theme,time and space,and structure,and further explains the work Xiao Ming’s Folklore Diary,which provides a richer theoretical basis for the creation and narrative strategies of folklore-themed animated short films.