Chapter 137: Childhood Resonance Come on
"Your paintings here are much better than what you are drawing now."
That was the first time Zhen Shuwang heard such an evaluation.
At that moment, when he heard these words, he was driven by instinct to focus his eyes on the pictures on the back of the sheets of paper, which he had drawn in a more imaginative way.
A chain sword that can attack autonomously like a venomous snake.
A blood-sucking sword with vampire patterns that can absorb the essence of the opponent's blood.
And the "Angel Healing Sword" made of pure white holy silver, every time it cuts, it does not hurt, but gives new life to the wound.
Zhen Shuwang looked at the painting that the little girl was staring at.
The painting of the Angel Healing Sword was the one he was most satisfied with since he started drawing cartoons.
Like most children born after 1995 and early 2000, the animations Zhen Shuwang watched when he was a child were mostly foreign animations.
It is obviously the same industry, but in that era, everyone seemed to tacitly define domestic animation as animation, and then regard foreign animation as anime.
Although this is a name that seems to have no meaning, in the era when Chinese animation had not yet begun to rise, everyone seemed to assume that animation, that is, domestic production, was for children. And animation is the masterpiece that truly carries certain ideas and triggers children's thinking.
Imported goods are better than domestic ones.
This seemed to be the consensus among kids of that era regarding this industry.
At first, Xu Yonghe was very dissatisfied with his grandson's worship of foreign things.
After all, in her impression, the animation her son watched when he was a child was not bad.
Sheriff Black Cat, Tales from the Magic Book, Havoc in Heaven, Shuke and Beta, Calabash Brothers, these are all representative masterpieces of Chinese animation.
But she apparently forgot that she hadn't watched any cartoon channels on her TV since her son reached puberty.
So much so that by the time her grandson came up with this unpromising idea of "worshiping foreign things and fawning on foreigners", she herself had not known about Donghuang's animation industry for nearly ten years.
Then, on that day, she, who had always recognized Donghuang's status as a cultural power, acknowledged for the first time their backwardness in the cultural field.
It’s not about heritage but innovation.
That was the darkest moment in Xu Yonghe's life.
As a Donghuang native who has been exposed to the cultural industry since childhood, she has always maintained great confidence in her own cultural heritage.
But at that moment, when she witnessed with her own eyes the animation works produced by Donghuang and other countries, especially a "special country" in the same era in the animation industry.
She really felt as if her lungs were poked.
Of course, she did not deny that there were any problems with the domestic cartoons that were oriented towards younger children. After all, an animation industry aimed at children should always have some works aimed at preschoolers.
But the problem was that at that time, most of the domestic works on the market were aimed at younger audiences.
Although there would occasionally be one or two masterpieces that were self-aware, those one or two persevering ones were unable to change the stereotypes that had already been formed in the market environment at that time.
At that moment, Xu Yonghe, who had worked hard in the cultural industry all his life, truly felt a kind of despair of doubting life.
Therefore, when her grandson said that he wanted to work hard in this industry, she immediately made up her mind to train and guide Zhen Shuwang to become a leading figure in Chinese animation.
But at the same time, she also understands that an overly smooth creative environment is not suitable for creating innovators who lead an era.
So from that day on, although she provided Zhen Shuwang with a superior life, she always maintained an extremely harsh attitude towards his desire to engage in animation creation.
Especially in the early days of Zhen Shuwang, when he was more obviously influenced by the foreign animation industry, Xu Yonghe's attitude was very strict and even "terrible".
This also caused Zhen Shuwang to question his original imagination and turned from the original two-dimensional to traditional Chinese cultural relics.
Although he had some knowledge of cultural relics at that time, it was obvious that at such a playful age, there were indeed very few children who would truly like this traditional culture of the old times from the bottom of their hearts.
This also caused Zhen Shuwang to question his own pursuit.
Although he is interested in a small part of traditional culture such as Journey to the West, he is obviously not so concrete as to all of them.
But in a growing environment where only by adopting traditional styles could one get praise from his grandmother, Zhen Shuwang finally chose to give it a try.
However, perhaps due to the high pursuit of some "historical traces" by many cultural workers, he inevitably encountered some restrictions when painting.
\"Isn't the pattern of the Tang Dynasty like this?\"
\"Such patterns should not appear in the Song Dynasty."
Most of these doubts came from other cultural workers around my grandparents.
Although they had malicious intentions, many of them just wanted to point out what the end of the artifact should be.
But for Zhen Shuwang, who was still a child at the time, this was a negation of his creation.
As a result, his painting style became more and more realistic, and at one point he even lost the spirit of his childhood when he aimed to become a top animation creator.
However, Xu Yonghe, who was fully focused on the recovery of cultural relics at the time, obviously did not realize the change in Zhen Shuwang's mentality.
From a creator with wild imagination to a young painter who focuses on realism.
Xu Yong and Hai didn't think much about it at the time and simply thought that this was just an inevitable process for children to learn painting.
After all, any art industry has a growth path from interest to profession and then to independent style.
Therefore, in Xu Yonghe's eyes, Zhen Shuwang had just reached a stage where he needed to refer to the works of famous artists in order to quickly become professional.
But what he didn't know was that Zhen Shuwang at that time had gradually lost his motivation to create.
He would only draw some products that do not exist in reality on the back of a piece of paper when he had nothing to do.
But even these leisure-time interests were gradually being exhausted as his professional skills grew.
There was even a period of time when he was painting only to numbly complete his schoolwork and the tasks assigned by his parents.
However, at this point in time, the intrusion of a little girl made him turn his attention back to those "designs" that he had casually drawn and even ignored since the beginning of creation.
Zhen Shuwang remembered the Angel Sword. When he created it, he had not yet given up his original Western modern mechanical aesthetic that leaned towards "cyberpunk".
The Angel Healing Sword was a product of his interest in cyberpunk at the time.
Therefore, when the sword was first created, it combined two completely different elements and styles: Eastern aesthetics and Western cyberpunk.
On this sword, the original angel feathers were decorated with feathers with oriental characteristics and kingfisher feathers.
Even the mechanized gears on the sword were covered with various traditional Donghuang patterns such as auspicious clouds.
He even thoughtfully hung a "Donghuang knot" that is very representative of Donghuang on the end of the hilt.
They even prepared a special ring that also combines both styles, as anime weapons of that era must have their own summoning device.
But even so, Zhen Shuwang didn't really take these designs to heart at the time.
The Angel Healing Sword was essentially a work that Zhen Shuwang created when he was about to give up on his creative ideas.
Otherwise, he would not have been able to design a sword that could heal wounds by cutting people.
Therefore, the so-called cultural integration is essentially a form of resistance for him to express his dissatisfaction.
So although the sword's design is exquisite, it is a "hodgepodge" that is a fusion or forcible splicing of various messy elements.
Even he himself felt that if he showed such a sword to his grandma or grandpa, he would most likely get a reaction like:
Comments like "This doesn't look like a sword at all." or "How can you fight a war with such a fancy sword?"
But the little girl obviously didn't notice any of this at the time. Her focus from beginning to end was just on how beautiful the sword was.
Zhen Shuwang even suspected that the little girl had assumed that such a fancy thing was a sword because the surrounding pages of paper were all drawn with swords.
But perhaps the little girl's eyes were too sincere when she looked at her work.
At that moment, he, who always didn't like people pointing fingers at his works, actually took the patience to ask the little girl what she thought of the painting for the first time in his life.
However, it was at that moment that the little girl said something that he remembered for more than ten years.
"I think of this sword as a dancer in a feather dress."
"Look at this sword. Although it looks like a weapon overall, if you change the angle, the hilt is the head, and connecting it from top to bottom is the shoulder and torso."
"The process of its stabbing forward is like a dancing dancer. And this jade pendant, don't you think it looks like a dancer's hair ornament?"
"Although I don't know what the sword you drew is, I think it really gives me a feeling that is completely different from other swords."
"Don't we all say that animals or objects will become spirits after they have cultivated to a certain level?"
"I think if this sword had life, it would be a gorgeous and domineering big sister."
"Probably... like Wu Zetian."
The little girl expressed her thoughts.
She almost tried her best to search out the image of a woman like "Wu Zetian" in her mind, who was both "beautiful" and "domineering".
At that time, she was just following her own thoughts and thinking, but she didn't know how much shock everything she said brought to Zhen Shuwang at that time.
"It doesn't have to be realistic, but the imagery contained in the painting should resonate with the audience."
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