Promoting Good Animation
Wolf Smoke Studio is a Chinese animation studio based in Shanghai. Usually when we say something is “made in China,” we often infer that the quality of the product is “inferior” or “fake.” When going to a Chinatown, most vendors that sell merchandise that are often a rip-off of their “official” counterpart. Most animation in China is often seen this way due to the strict censorship in the country. Some infamous animations such as “Miracle Star” and “Legend of Lucky Pie” gained notoriety because of their almost-blatant plagiarism over their Western counterpart “Adventures of Gumball” and “Adventure Time.”
Being a fan of comic books, I was intrigued to how they would treat Batman in this animation. I was surprised to see that the animation in this short was executed very well and made me geek out a little. The studio came up with a unique way of combining a traditional Cantonese setting with Batman, one of the most iconic comic book characters.
The setting of Chinatown often puts me at ease as I grew up surrounded by Chinese culture. The color palette used in the animation is reminiscent of old Chinese paintings, and the style of coloring is similar to that of a water-color painting. The “rough patches” in the animation give the feeling that we’re looking at paper and this feeling is given through out the entire short. The line-work varies between the characters and environment. The line-work of the environment is crisp and neat, making it feel like we’re looking at a drawing or painting. The line-work of the characters/moving objects are somewhat messy as if we’re looking at a sketch.
Despite the sketchy-look of the characters, the animation is very fluid. The sketchy feel gives an advantage as movement in animation is often depicted with blurs and such. The characters have very sharp line-work and appear to be made up of polygons. The usage of blurs is done well and does make movement seem more dynamic and fast. The anatomy of the characters is done well and the style in which they are drawn in give off an “Asian” vibe. When they are fighting, there are black brush marks and ink blotches, gives the impression that the characters are kind of drawing/painting themselves.
Character voices are done well as the English voice actors do make the characters more lively, but character mouth animations don’t appear to match what they are saying. This reminds me of anime when it is in English dub. Sound design in environments and objects are done well, and the sound of the whip and batons spinning help it enhance idea of movement. The music also makes it feel like you’re watching some kind of Chinese celebration with the usage of drums. I think it would be very interesting to watch the animation with a Chinese dub.
