By Qiu Liwei; translated by Yixing Li This essay reviews the evolution of Taiwan animation, from the golden age of overseas subcontracting in the 1980s, to the creation of original content in the early 21st century, and the market orientation in the current age. The focus of this discussion is the interdependence and balance between … Continue reading Taiwan Animation: From Subcontractor to Creator
By Yiyang Hou Panpan Yang’s PhD dissertation, Animating Space: Towards a Poetics of Chinese Animation, fosters a dialogue between cinema studies and the study of visual art. In this study, Yang offers an interdisciplinary and critically-engaged examination of the poetics of Chinese animation from the 1920s to the present. Taking the history of Chinese animation … Continue reading Animating Space: Towards a Poetics of Chinese Animation, Ph.D. dissertation, by Panpan Yang, University of Chicago, USA, August 2020. 286 pp.
By Yomi Braester In this essay I hope to provoke scholars of animation into considering the role of time, both cinematic time and historical time. Like other genres of the moving image, animation often has at its core the disappearance of the image — an anticipated, even planned obsolescence. I examine here works exhibited as … Continue reading Animation, the Obsolescence of the Image, and the Disappearance of Hong Kong Architecture
By Jifeng Huang The History of Chinese Animation, edited by Sun Lijun, makes a considerable contribution to English language scholars who are interested in Chinese animation. In the first volume of this book, Chinese animation in the embryo stage (before 1930), the early stage (1931–1948), and the socialist era (1949–1977) are linearly instructed. The second … Continue reading The History of Chinese Animation (volume 2), edited by Sun Lijun. Routledge, 2022. 220pp.
By Yang Zeyu; translated by Jessica Morris During the early stages of Chinese animation, teaching materials were developed according to the needs of those working in the field. With ideas derived from filmmaking practices, these teaching materials standardized operations and the direction of progress in animation, as well as reflected the diverse theories held by … Continue reading The Evolution of Early Chinese Animation Teaching Materials
By Hui YAN Chen Shaopeng’s recent publication The New Generation in Chinese Animation is based on his PhD dissertation, which Isabel Galway kindly reviewed in 2018. His book follows the general layout of the dissertation. The first chapter, the introduction, provides the historical background of NGCCA, the acronym for “New Generation of Chinese Cinematic Animation” … Continue reading The New Generation in Chinese Animation, by Shaopeng Chen. Bloomsbury Academic, 2021. 304 pp.
By Thomas William Whyke and Joaquin Lopez-Mugica Sun Lijun’s edited book The History of Chinese Animation, volume I, is a readable and analytical lengthy study of the artistry, commercial and technical aspects of Chinese animation. It constitutes one of the standout contributions to the English language scholarly field on the subject matter. The long-standing development of … Continue reading The History of Chinese Animation (volume 1), edited by Sun Lijun. Routledge, 2022. 326pp.
By Yasheng She What does it take to transcend a national border to be globally recognized, and what are the responsibilities of being on the global stage? I will attempt to answer these two questions in my analysis of three incidents surrounding the open-world roleplaying game Genshin Impact (2020). While video game is distinct from … Continue reading What is Lost Moving from “Shanzhai” to Global: On the Video Game Genshin Impact (2020)
Download PDF By Kelly Reiling In June of 1950, the magazine Manhua yuekan 漫画月刊 published its first issue in Shanghai. During the magazine’s lifespan, which lasted until 1960, Manhua yuekan and its cartoonists underwent periods of artistic suppression and expression, enacted by the newly-established Chinese government through a series of political campaigns. The consequences of … Continue reading The Propagandist’s Palette: The Art of Manhua Magazine (1950-1960)
Download PDF By Dong Yang The aura of contemporary art is a free association. –Nicolas Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics In one of his later essays “Spinoza and the Three ‘Ethics,’” composed around 1990 and collected in the book Essays Critical and Clinical, Gilles Deleuze offers a mature and profound reading of Spinoza’s Ethics as a composite … Continue reading The Artisanal Sensorial, or Lei Lei’s Geometrical Regime of Animated Images