The Characterization Of Children Characters In Red-Theme Animations

The red-theme animation,as a typical form of art that meets the requirements of new-age art works,has gained great attention from both the domestic animation creators and academics in the recent years.Since the children characters are widely existing in the redtheme animations,the characterization of this type of character is definitely worth investigating.Starting from the perspective of characterization of animation characters,this paper selects ‘the children characters in red-theme animations' as the research object,systematically analyzed and summarized the characterization of it using the research methods of literature review,data analysis,case study and comparative analysis.Some suggestion for improving the characterization methods have also been established in the paper.The author firstly analyzed the present research status of relevant topics and concluded that the studies on the combination of ‘red-theme animation' and ‘children characters' are still limited and requires further investigation,hence the importance and novelty of this research work is highlighted.The author then conducted comparative data analysis to study the developments of red-theme animations and the children characters in the recent and historical animation products.An overall development status of the research object is presented in the paper.After that,the researcher compared the characteristics of physical appearances between the children characters in red theme and non-red theme animations,based on the author's own graduation animation.The main findings are: in the facial design of children characters,the facial features of children in red-theme animations are generally more persevering,reliable and a little bit more aggressive;in the costume design,the clothing of children in red-theme animations often reflects the features of clothing in the ‘red-age' China,which is more simple and plain;in the color design of the characters,the color selected for the children in red-theme animations are generally of low saturation,which gives the characters a stable and steady look.Apart from the physical appearance,the personality and the spiritual characteristics of the research object have also been investigated by example studies and comparative analysis.The results include: the children characters in red-theme animations are patriotic and have strong Chinese ethos;the characters are also generally fear no sacrifice for revolution;their personalities are often more mature and steady than the similar aged characters in non-red theme animations;and they are also characterized with relatively higher intelligence and ability.The researcher then summarized the positive impacts that the children characters bring to the red-theme animations,which include that a good characterization of children characters can relax the intense story rhythm of the animation,arouse sympathy of the audience and inspire them to think about the theme of the animation work.The children characters also set good examples for the small audience,which bring positive impacts on the education of Chinese children.Moreover,the paper summarized the shortcomings of the characterization of children characters in the recent and historical red-theme animations,including the over idealized characterization of the personalities,as well as the over-exaggerated intelligence and abilities of the children characters.Furthermore,the author suggested some improvement measures to overcome the abovementioned shortcomings,e.g.the animation should characterize the children characters in different aspects to complete their character images,other than only focusing on their heroic behaviors/activities;the characterization of children characters should comply with rational sense,rather than over-exaggerate the intelligence and ability of the characters.