5 articles after watching the Chinese comic version of "Luo Xiaohei's War" theatrical version

"Luo Xiaohei Zhan Ji" tells the story of goblins hidden in the human world. Originally, humans did not know the existence of goblins, and goblins got along very well with humans. However, with the destruction of the environment, many The goblins lost their home. Xiao Hei is a cat demon who also lost his home and became a wanderer. During the journey, I met good fairy companions and kind-hearted people. The conflict between fairies and humans continues to escalate. Which side will Xiao Hei choose? I hope the following film review will be helpful to you!

Review of "Luo Xiao Hei's War"

Except for the scoring everyone is discussing, aside from this topic, the plot is actually very good. The characterization is successful.

Why don’t you look forward to the development of other characters’ personalities and stories in the sequel? I’m personally looking forward to it. It has been seen that each character has obvious personality traits. We can dig deeper and maybe there will be a new plot and a new theatrical version. For example, Xiao Hei’s mother, human provocation, and Xiao Hei’s growth. Open your mind a little, and even go to infinite rebellion, Xiao Hei becomes darker as he grows up. . etc. I don’t dare to think too much about it, it’s too wonderful and terrible. .

Come on, domestic production!

Reflections after watching "Luo Xiaohei's War" 2

Storyboarding

Plane animation is really difficult to make oh. Compared with 3D animation, flat animation is extremely dependent on people's handiwork and thinking space.

The most outstanding aspect of this animation is the storyboarding of dynamic scenes. The storyboards are detailed, there are many shots, and the angles are strange. To achieve this level and make it highly enjoyable to watch, I personally feel that it is on par with Japanese comics.

Among them, the most impressive one, apart from the series of dynamic storyboards of the kitten in the opening, is the fight scene on the roof of the train that is the most outstanding.

After watching the movie, I kept thinking about the original animation person, or the animation director, this person, this group of people, so cool!

The combination of two-dimensional and three-dimensional

Many of the final climax battle scenes must be completed using 3D scene synthesis. Judging from the results, I can already feel the powerlessness in making big battles. This three-dimensional scene is really poorly done.

I guess that 2D is more incapable of completing it, so I chose 3D to do it.

In recent years, we have become tired of watching American 3D special effects movies. "Players", "Avengers", etc. all have group battle scenes. But in terms of scene production in this movie, the color palette is very dry. The structure is simple with lots of white space. In particular, some connections are blank and stiff.

But it is a domestically produced plane after all. With such powerful dynamic storyboards as mentioned above, I think this problem is not a big problem.

Detailed storyboard connection

Many key frames feel seriously missing, and the connection between transition shots is very stiff.

For example, this transformation animation from cat to human, I can only remember one scene after watching it. This one is outstanding, but other than that, the basics that need to be used are missing and crude.

Personally, I think the deformation animation should be richer in this theme.

Flaws

The characters are very stereotyped. In particular, the protagonist's pretentious and profound personality is very similar to the upright and pretentious style of the popular young actors.

The structure of the plot is generally okay, and it tells a good story, but from a certain point on, the protagonist never changes back into a cat.

It is top-heavy, the first half is obviously fine, and the second half is rough, as if the budget is not enough.

Blessings

But when domestic graphic animation has reached this point, it is already a qualitative leap. I must give it five stars to pay tribute to the domestic animation people.

Three thoughts after watching "Luo Xiaohei's War"

Zijian, the lead singer of the Hedgehog band who had just participated in "Summer of the Band", expressed when answering questions from Ma Dong's first program This point of view is that there is no difference in artistic style itself, but there is a level of artist.

This is perfectly appropriate to use in the recent discussion about the revival of Chinese comics. On one side is "Nezha" with a box office of 4.8 billion, and on the other side is the 2D animated film "Luo Xiaohei's Chronicles" which was criticized for having "rough graphics" and making "Nezha" a hot topic.

Is Luo Xiaohei’s 2D painting bad?

In fact, he is in the wrong place

Since the animated movie "Luo Xiaohei's War" was released, there has been a Plenty of media outlets came out to criticize it for "no shadows on the characters", "retro-style graphics", "not good enough for the big screen", etc.

Is this really the case?

The author interviewed a producer of Tencent Animation, and the other person revealed the wrong parts of these comments. He said that the absence of shadows on animated characters is not a retro style, on the contrary, having shadows is. For example, the classic MGM movie "Tom and Jerry" has shadows. It was in 1939, and this is called retro.

In 1939, Tom and Jerry premiered the first episode of "Home Sweet Home". You can see that there are obvious shadow marks on the wall, the cat's belly, and the side of the mouse.

"Shadowless painting style" is not only not synonymous with "retro and saving money", on the contrary, it is a very popular painting technique in recent years called "shadowless technique". Some of the works of "Millennium Actress", "Summer Wars" and the famous animation director Akiyuki Shinbo boldly adopted the shadowless technique and large-area color blocks. Childhood memories of "The Powerpuff Girls" and GAINAX masterpiece "Garter Angel" and other well-known works The work also partly uses the shadowless technique.

Satoshi Kon’s masterpiece "Millennium Actress" won the highest award in the animated film industry in 2002, the Annie Award for Best Animation Achievement, known as the Oscars of animation. A very important reason was to commend Satoshi Kon. Through the excellent use of shadowless techniques, it has promoted the advancement of global animation production levels.

Since the shadowless technique and the shadowed technique are just different painting styles and are not superior or inferior, then the criticism that "Luo Xiaohei Zhan Ji" uses the shadowless technique to save money is naturally untenable. Stop.

Is 2D animation more economical?

Don’t be ridiculous

An animation original artist said that whether to use the shadowless technique mainly depends on the director’s painting style. It has nothing to do with production.

The advantage of the shadowless technique is that the composition of the picture is simple, which can shorten the construction period to a certain extent. The disadvantage is that this technique is difficult for ordinary painters to master. It requires the connection of character movements and spatial structure to achieve a three-dimensional effect. The corresponding shadowing technique only requires coloring. It can be said that "no shadow is better than having a shadow".

"The shadowless technique seems to save production time, but hiring a Dachu (an honorific title for a well-known painter) who masters the shadowless technique is actually more expensive than an ordinary painter. In actual terms, It doesn’t necessarily save money, but many people outside the production process don’t know that,” the original artist explained.

In fact, this kind of joke happened in the animation industry a few years ago. At that time, the policymakers who subsidized the animation did not know much about the industry. They subsidized animation on a per-minute basis, with 2,000 yuan per minute for 2D animation and 3,000 yuan per minute for 3D animation. But in most cases, the production cost of 2D animation is much higher than that of 3D animation (but if done seriously, it is quite expensive). According to Phoenix.com, the production cost of the 2D "Pleasant Goat" movie was around 25 million, while the cost of the 3D "Pleasant Goat" movie was only half of that of "Pleasant Goat" according to the film studio. Of course, there is no upper limit to the budget of a 3D animated film. For example, Hollywood's "Big Hero 6", which is said to be a low-cost 106-minute film, cost about US$160 million.

There is no shadow of Baymax, but it cost 150 million US dollars

On the one hand, investors, the media and even ordinary audiences do not actually understand the actual cost of animation production. Where; on the other hand, some animation producers without dreams began to cut corners in search of kickbacks and rent-seeking space.

Take the "Pleasant Goat" animation series as an example.

According to the Qianzhan Industry Research Institute, Guangdong Original Power Culture Communication Co., Ltd. was established by the creative team of "Pleasant Goat" in 2005. At that time, Huang Weiming, the "father of Pleasant Goat", used advanced foreign Flash technology in "Pleasant Goat" and reduced the production cost of a single episode. It dropped from 100,000 yuan to 30,000 yuan. By 2009, "Pleasant Goat" had produced 580 episodes, and the three theatrical versions were all hits. The IP derivatives alone earned 1 billion, ruining the aesthetics of the generation born after 2000.

2D animators with dreams will lose money in the end

But it’s worth it

Of course, producers with dreams don’t end well either.

Production I.G (known as PIG for its abbreviation, affectionately known as Pig Society by anime fans), is a production company that has produced popular animations such as "Guilty Crown", "Kuroko's Basketball" and "Psycho". In fact, there are two housekeeping IPs that are at the bottom of the box: "Mobile Police" and "Ghost in the Shell". These two cartoons rewrote the history of Japanese animation and directly influenced Hollywood classics such as "The Matrix", "Inception" and "Pacific Rim". "Ghost in the Shell" also appeared on the big screen and gained artistic status. It is supreme and the painting style shines through the back of the paper. But because it was so artistic, the market response was average.

Japanese animation companies do not have relatively smooth financing channels in terms of venture capital and government support like domestic animation companies, but Zhushe is very clumsy in developing some for these classic IPs. The popular IP that meets the circumstances makes money to support "Ghost in the Shell". Unfortunately, each film of "Ghost in the Shell" had to be filmed at a loss, and the production costs of each film were higher than the previous ones, but Zhushe was still willing to invest in it.

In 2004, the movie "Ghost in the Shell: Innocence" was nominated for the main competition unit of the 54th Cannes Film Festival, and "Mulholland Drive", "Borderland" and " "The Piano Teacher" and other masterpieces that later became classics are on the same stage. This means that animated film art finally no longer needs to set up separate animation awards for selection, but has a soul-level aesthetic value together with mainstream art films.

Sina Entertainment once commented on this animation: With a large amount of information composed of gorgeous computer animation, it is filled with the answers that Mamoru Oshii wanted to continue his previous work. The profound meaning is rare in cartoons, and it combines the British The philosophies of poets such as Milton, Shakespeare, and Chinese Confucius are used to make movies with the theme of cyborgs to reveal the confusion of human beings in the face of ever-changing technology and to find a way out in front of the confused human beings.

Very helpless, the box office of this animation is not ideal; but fortunately, as early as 2004, we saw the level of animation production that was 20 years ahead of the times, so much so that even now Hollywood and Disney Instead of creating a similar CG-to-2D film, we turned to live-action CG. As a result, this year's live-action version of "The Lion King" failed miserably.

Animation is animation, and the movie must also be animation. After all, a lion in the second dimension can only become an African black-footed cat in the third dimension. Japanese animators obviously think about this more thoroughly than American directors, but the cost is high.

Another case is Japan’s Tatsunoko Studio. In 2005, when they celebrated their 40th anniversary, they decided to make a commemorative animation (not an animated movie, but an ordinary TV animation), "Karas". The production cost of one episode of this animation was as high as 400 million yen (compared to Pleasant Goat, you know what I'm talking about), and a total of 6 episodes were produced, which directly caused the studio's capital chain to break, and it was acquired and reorganized. If you want to ask why you are so desperate, then I can only answer that it is for art. A year later, this animation won the OVA Outstanding Work Award at the Tokyo International Animation Festival.

In one word, it’s expensive

The highlight moment of 2D domestic animation

Not belonging to 2019

Shanghai Film Studio also I have tried so hard. China's unique ink painting, today in the auction market, an ink painting by a contemporary painter is worth hundreds of thousands of yuan. In the last century, we Chinese used ink to paint.

According to the general scale of TV animation production, the number of drawings required for an animation of about 20 minutes is about 5,000 to 6,000. In 2009, domestic animation paid animators 1.5 yuan per drawing, which was almost free of charge. In earlier times, each painting cost only a few cents.

The ink painting masters at Shangmei Factory obviously did not create ink animations such as "Tadpole Looking for Mom" ??and "Landscape Love" that shocked the world just for the few cents. Among them, the original animal image painting of "Tadpole Looking for Mom" ??came directly from the works of the famous Chinese painting master Qi Baishi; "Landscape Love" only one short film included older generation animation masters such as Te Wei and Qian Jiajun, and even the famous Chinese painting Li Keran , Cheng Shifa also participated in the art direction. In the end, the animation swept twelve international and domestic awards and returned home with great success. If measured by current market standards, the production cost will be much higher than Disney, and even money cannot measure its true cost.

Qi Baishi’s work "Twelve Screens of Landscape" was sold for a high price of 931.5 million yuan. You can imagine how many 900 million yuan were sold in "Little Tadpole Looking for Mom".

Every frame is a work of art

Here, we also pay tribute to the older generation of animation workers such as Dai Tieliang, Wan Guchan, Wan Laiming, etc., who use their superb skills to and selfless dedication supported the most glorious era of Chinese animation.

There was no temptation of interest in that era, there was only belief in that era.

People often ask why domestic animations such as "The Great Sage" and "Nezha" are good enough, but there are still so many criticisms in the industry. That's because we have really forgotten how brilliant domestic animation was in the past.

It is precisely because of this artistic pursuit that no expense is spared that Chinese ink animation has won praise internationally. No country dares to compete with the patience of the Chinese. The Japanese animation industry even calls it a "miracle" . However, it is precisely because of the separation between artistic value and commercial value that ink animation is facing the embarrassment of being unsustainable.

How to correctly criticize "Luo Xiaohei"?

Perhaps we should reflect on the fact that we may not actually understand a good animation and what exactly we should appreciate about it.

For example, as mentioned at the beginning of the article, some media interpreted the extremely difficult shadowless technique as "cutting corners"; for example, some people interpreted the extremely sophisticated techniques in Satoshi Kon's masterpieces "Paprika" and "Millennium Actress" Circular narrative is explained as "the director cannot tell stories". I still remember one time when a Weibo movie account recommended Kon Satoshi's work, and someone in the comments directly said, "I don't understand, but like it like me." I'm very surprised, what's the world like now, you don't understand what there is to show off? Why don't you show off that "Pleasant Goat" is easy to understand and suitable for all ages?

Although we mentioned that in the world of chaos, In the online world, the evaluation system of movies and animations needs to be reshaped urgently. But at present, it seems that Douban and IMDB are the more fair evaluations.

Judging from the system of Douban, it is understandable that "Landscape Love" is rated 9.6 points on Douban due to its age, but "Luo Xiaohei" received a high score of 9.6 points. Why are there still people? Simply attribute this problem to feelings. In terms of sentiment, the sentiment of "Shanghai Fortress" is huge. Fans of the original Jiangnan are all born in the 70s and 80s, and are the backbone of this society; and the sentiment of "Luo Xiaohei" is just a group of people who are just like us. In the Internet age, we are just the natives of the Internet who use its emoticons and chase its flash animations.

To hack "Luo Xiaohei", first, you can hack his marketing. The marketing of "Luo Xiaohei" this time still did not break out of the traditional film promotion conventions, and did not capture the excitement of the second dimension. It was really tepid. The film crew moved the film to the Mid-Autumn Festival, but the plan could not keep up with the changes. There are two blockbuster movies, "Nezha: The Devil Boy Comes to the World" and "Fast and Furious: Special Ops", as well as "Bollywood Robot 2.0: Rebirth and Return" and "Freehand Rock Climbing" Waiting for new overseas films. It was originally to escape the storm of summer blockbusters, but ended up bumping into "Nezha" and "Fast and Furious". Fortunately, it has a good reputation and has maintained its vitality.

To hack "Luo Xiaohei", secondly, you can hack his production.

Based on the animation's consistently refreshing art style, more sophisticated character and scene settings, refreshing fight scenes, and excellent storyboard design, the animated film "Luo Xiaohei's War" exudes the uniqueness of 2D animation all the time. Some artistic charm. However, many scenes, such as the inconsistent 3D scenes and the large areas of blank space during the battle, also remind the audience of the financial problems encountered in the production of this animated film.

Director MTJJ Mumu also explained to the audience through Weibo about insufficient funds and poor publicity. These two points directly determine the film's theater schedule and production level and even its final box office.

Everyone is aware of these problems, but the only thing that cannot be criticized in "Luo Xiaohei" is its painter.

Mio, a student majoring in animation, said that the painting skills of "Luo Xiaohei" are textbook level. He mentioned that he used Luo Xiaohei’s comics for storyboard comparison and practice in the flower arrangement class at university.

"Looking at the storyboards (Luo Xiaohei), he can express the plot and describe the details without dragging, and the big picture is rendered quite well. From the excellent storyboards, there are small-scale scenes. The picture structure is cute and yet atmospheric;

Geometric composition commonly used in movies

From the perspective of color matching, Luo Xiaohei's War Chronicles itself does not have a lot of details, colors and brushstrokes. We can all see that Xiao Hei's style is simple and cute, but Xiao Hei not only has a few single colors, but also controls the color tones of the colorful scenes very well.

From the perspective of the painter. Look, don't look at people's simple lines. Anyone who draws knows that the simpler the thick lines, the more skill can be seen in what is expressed through them. From these concise and solid lines to express the movements and expressions of the characters, "Luo Xiaohei has done a great job in terms of joy, anger, sorrow and joy."

In addition to the three points of storyboard coloring and painting skills, "Luo Xiaohei" is remarkable in terms of picture details and story rhythm. Especially in the field of soundtrack and dubbing, "Luo Xiaohei" used top-rated artists in the domestic animation dubbing circle such as Shan Xin. In terms of production quality and artistic expression, the director gave everything he could to "Luo Xiaohei" Well, except for the real lack of funds.

"In fact, 2D animation requires a lot of manual hand-drawing, and 3D relies on modeling. 2D is more time-consuming, expensive and laborious than 3D." Co-producer Li Chen said that it seems that he finally understood the meaning of 2D animation back then. What a unreliable policy it is to have less subsidies than 3D.

However, due to policy influences and the impact of Hollywood CG animation, domestic animation audiences have already completed the market cultivation process of 3D animation, which has forced upstream producers to produce more 3D animations. , making the original 2D animation, which is more in line with the nature of animation, struggling and rarely started.

When looking back at the top 20 box office works in the Chinese animated film market, it is not difficult to find that in addition to "Big Fish and Begonia" and "Your Name" released in 2016, and the re-released "Spirited Away" in 2019 "Xun" is 2D, the other 17 animated films are all 3D.

“Influenced by excellent overseas works, there are still many ordinary Chinese audiences who stubbornly believe that 3D animation is more advanced than 2D, and more like a big movie worth paying for.” "Production". Although the occurrence of this phenomenon makes many two-dimensional enthusiasts feel sad and regretful, the actual preferences and perceptions of the mass market have also forced many domestic animation and film companies to invest in 3D after weighing the pros and cons. "ACGX issued a statement saying that 3D animated movies have gradually become a "viewing habit" for most ordinary audiences around the world.

The era of AI animation is coming

It is urgent to protect 2D animation

This is a very dangerous signal. This means that in the future it will be difficult for the market to accept the traditional hand-drawn animation styles and aesthetic tastes of Hayao Miyazaki, Satoshi Kon and Disney.

In the Chinese film market, if an excellent 2D animated film like "Luo Xiaohei Zhan Ji" wants to have a place, the key is to be able to make the public fully feel the uniqueness of 2D animation like Japan and a few countries in Europe. Artistic charm.

More importantly, the creative experience accumulated by Chinese animators since "Havoc in Heaven" 80 years ago has disappeared after undergoing market-oriented reconstruction, and only 2D animation has remained. This is a single seedling. Nowadays, the market share continues to decline, and 2D animation can only rely on wood and his "Luo Xiaohei" to survive alone. As for our next generation, should we still let them watch "Pleasant Goat" and "Bear Bears"?

Maybe not, because today's children love to watch "Peppa Pig" and "My Little Pony" . This is what the media friend said: "No shadows, just color blocks to save money." But if we don’t protect 2D works now, we may not even be able to see color blocks in the future.

Recently, a new artificial intelligence technology has caused the animation industry to suffer from thorns and sleepless nights. This technology is called PFNN: Phase-Functioned Neural Networks, which mainly uses artificial intelligence to automatically create animations.

At the same time, this project team also produced a demonstration animation. Let’s take a look at the style.

So are you sure we want to watch this stuff in the future? Technology does make life more convenient, but it does not make life better, nor does it make art greater. I don’t want to watch it, I still want to see the kind of animation that the artist drew one by one, whether he drew it on paper, on celluloid film, or on PS or AE with a computer graphics tablet.

Technology has deprived humans of too many things, so don’t get involved in such a pure art as animation.

Four thoughts after watching "Luo Xiaohei's War"

Xiaohei premiered on September 7, 2019. I planned to watch a movie with my friends, but I haven't been to the cinema for a long time. I opened the software and started to choose. Luo Xiaohei Zhan Ji was the first recommendation, and the score was very high. I seem to have heard someone mention it on Weibo. I don’t know much about it. It should be close, so I’ll choose this one. I bought the ticket without much expectation.

However, compared with entering the theater calmly, my friends and I were so excited when we came out of the theater. It was so good. Why have we never heard of this movie before?

Xiao Hei: Master, can I go with you? (I can’t stop crying)

Infinite: Of course!

My heart is already in turmoil Wan Zhang, this is so wonderful. According to the general plot development, after going through so much, the people around you will only accompany you for a while. I can accept it if we are separated like this. But Xiao Hei spoke his heart out loudly and responded to him infinitely decisively. I really burst into tears.

Okay, let’s sort out the excitement and talk briefly about the movie. The movie mainly tells the story of humans and fairies. With the development of human society, Xiao Hei lost his home and wandered outside. At first, he met Feng Xi and other fairies. Later, he was mistakenly captured by humans during the melee and began their journey. . The painting style at the beginning feels very Japanese, but I haven’t watched enough anime to comment too much.

Xiao Hei continues to grow with Infinite’s company. In this process, Infinite inspires Xiao Hei to think about right and wrong, rather than preaching and indoctrination. If your stance is different, your thoughts will be different. In the end, Xiao Hei sorted it out by himself, saving humans from greater harm. The whole movie is both funny and healing, and the laughs are not vulgar at all, which I like very much. Xiao Hei's transformation from being wary of Infinite to his later trust and dependence is heart-warming, and Infinite will never be lonely again with such an adorable little Hei as his companion. Of course, Infinite is still very domineering. When asking Xiao Hei to go to the club, he said: I will give you two choices, one is to go voluntarily, and the other is to be tied up by me. Wow, does it make a difference? If not, I’d better go and don’t bundle up too much.

I was shocked when Fengxi, Infinite and Xiao Hei fought. Such a healing style was unambiguous in the big scene. Of course, the irritable Nezha also appeared: the space system is really annoying. Oh! The second half of the show is full of laughter.

After watching the movie, I still don’t know how to post it on WeChat Moments, because I like it so much that I hesitate to look forward and backward. The drama version of Luo Xiaohei has been updated to episode 28, echoing many foreshadowings in the movie version. Infinity only has his name in the drama version. The drama version has been updated for so many years and has always maintained its own rhythm and has not changed due to this flashy and busy world. I saw someone saying that a dull director should maintain absolute say in the film when raising investment, which would make it very difficult, but it also ensures the integrity of the film, so we can see the current Luo Xiaohei War. Although I met Xiao Hei a little late, I was deeply attracted by this foodie Xiao Hei. I hope to see more dramas or movies in the future!

After watching "Luo Xiao Hei's War" Sense Five

The central theme of this movie is to illustrate the destruction of the environment by humans. This type of work has never happened before.

"The Day After Tomorrow", which is a science fiction movie, almost scares the audience through the screen that if we don't care about the environment, human beings will become extinct.

This kind of politically correct subject matter makes it easiest for the creator to use Spring and Autumn style to narrate, not to tell stories, but to tell values. However, the narrative style of this anime’s creative team is extremely gentle. The creators were clever because they did not push the audience's neck, forcing the audience to admit that humans who destroy the environment are bad people. It is not based on right or wrong, but based on position. This way of expression is commendable.

Only Hayao Miyazaki's "Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind" made me feel so emotional about the same theme.

The only flaw is that this movie lacks a description of the human group. The whole story is caused by human beings destroying the environment, but the ending point is just the internal fighting between a few goblins, which makes it feel like a heavy task. In this case, it naturally did not guide the audience's thoughts to a deeper level and sublimate the theme, which makes me feel a little regretful.