Which master's work does the animal image in "Tadpole Looking for Mom" ​​come from?

Qi Baishi.

"Tadpole Looking for Mom" ​​is China's first ink cartoon produced by Shanghai Art Film Studio. The shapes of the small animals are based on images of fish and shrimp created by the painter Qi Baishi. The prototypes of the protagonists, the tadpoles, come from Qi Baishi's famous ink painting "The Sound of Frogs Ten Miles Out of the Mountain Spring".

The film tells the story of a frog mother who leaves after laying tadpole eggs, and a group of tadpoles looking for her mother based on the characteristics of the mother described by the shrimp father-in-law. Along the way, they mistook goldfish, crabs, turtles, and catfish for their mothers. Finally, the tadpoles finally found their mother.

Although "Tadpole Looking for Mom" ​​lasts only 15 minutes, it integrates traditional Chinese ink painting techniques with animation. Its biggest innovation and breakthrough is to make China's unique "ink painting" move. , showing the charm of Chinese landscape painting. The aquatic creatures of different shapes are vividly and flexibly depicted, and the innocent childlike joy is vividly transformed into the art of light and shadow on the paper. The Chinese style expression technique forms the aesthetic expression of animation.

"Tadpole Looking for Mom" ​​has amazed the international animation community with its delicate ink painting and delicate action design. It has won the Silver Sail Award for short films at the 14th Locarno International Film Festival, the Special Short Film Award at the 4th Annecy International Animation Film Festival in France, etc. This is not only the accumulation and precipitation of traditional Chinese art spirit by the older generation of animators in China, a land rich in traditional ink art, but also the crystallization of the enlightenment of traditional Chinese aesthetic concepts.