This study investigates how ethnic visual resources are translated and reconstructed in Chinese animation through a focused case study of The Heroic Little Sisters of the Grassland (1965) and analyzes character design, color systems, and spatial construction to explicate an “innovation mechanism” for ethnic visual language under industrialized production by drawing on visual semiotics and animation studies in this paper. Methodologically, the study adopts qualitative textual/visual analysis with a frame-informed reading of scenes, supported by a structured coding of ethnic symbols (costume, hairstyle, action motifs), color symbolism (hue, saturation, contrast), and spatial dramaturgy (environmental dynamics and narrative function). The findings show that (1) ethnic markers in character design are operationalized through symbolic simplification and functional generalization; (2) high-saturation color blocks align naturalistic grassland palettes with emotional dramaturgy; and (3) the grassland space operates as a co-actor that externalizes narrative tension (e.g., blizzard sequences), thereby mediating between national style and industrial spectacle. The study contributes a portable analytical framework for ethnic animation that balances cultural specificity with globally intelligible form, while highlighting limitations (e.g., lack of motion-capture data) and future directions (comparative, data-enriched studies).
Anisu et al. (Thu,) studied this question.