By Tencent Games
Shadow puppetry is a form of opera in which the characters are cut out of animal skin or cardboard and illuminated by light. Three art branches have gradually formed throughout the country. Namely the Northern shadow play centered on Hebei, the Western shadow play centered on Shanxi, and the central and southern shadow play represented by Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Huguang regions. Shadow play is not only a puppet art, but also an authentic handicraft. It is made of cowhide, donkey, horse, and sudden skin, through several processes such as material selection, engraving, coloring, stitching and painting. During the performance, the artists behind the white curtain, while manipulating the opera characters, while singing the story with local popular tunes, at the same time with purcussion instruments and strings, rich in local atmosphere.
As a traditional form of film art, the Shanxi shadow play art integrates local opera singing and other singing expressions. It is a folk art performance method favored by the public for thousand of years, and it is also the predecessor origin of modern industrial film/documentary medium. It’s a well-deserved treasure of Chinese folk art. Show the characteristics and artistic expression of shadow play art in a digital way, popularize science, inherit and revitalize the expresssion form of traditional shadow play art to the majority of players with the popular digital entertainment form of “hero character cultural creation skin”, and tell the ancient story of the two-hands dance with the technique of light and shadow.
