Recently, the special exhibition "Landscape Love - Exploring the Eastern Aesthetic Code in Ink Animation" opened at the Wushanming Art Museum in Hangzhou. More than 190 manuscripts, literature archives, and production tools of the classic animation "Landscape Love" shot in 1988 were exhibited, bringing viewers' thoughts back into the world of light and shadow where ink and animation blend together, and inspiring the academic community to re-examine ink animation. Chinese ink wash animation was born in the 1960s. It perfectly integrates the freehand essence of traditional Chinese ink painting with modern animation technology, interpreting timeless and far-reaching stories on the screen, showcasing the profound and rich cultural heritage of China, and creating a unique artistic style in the history of world animation. It is particularly worth mentioning that Chinese painting masters such as Li Keran, Cheng Shifa, and Zhuo Hejun collaborated with Shanghai Animation Film Studio as art directors to create classic works such as "Pastoral Flute," "Deer Bell," and "Landscape Love. These works bring the static brushwork and lines of ink painting to life, fully preserving the artistic charm of literati painting, vividly conveying the aesthetic ideas of traditional freehand brushwork, and achieving the organic integration of poetry, painting, people, objects, and nature. It can be said that the ink and wash animation at that time shaped the collective memory of a generation of Chinese people, and also established a distinctive Chinese style in the world's animation art with its unique artistic charm. Since the 1990s, the animation industry has undergone market-oriented reforms, and many production agencies have shifted to a self financing business model. Compared to ink animation with complex processes and long production cycles, they tend to choose other animation types with controllable costs and high production efficiency to quickly adapt to market demand and achieve profitability. As a result, ink wash animation fell into a period of development silence for more than ten years. Until recent years, digital technology has become increasingly mature, and ink animation has experienced innovative breakthroughs. Two dimensional digital ink animation and three-dimensional digital ink animation have emerged successively, not only with experimental animated short films such as "Autumn Harvest", but also with popular cinema animated films such as "White Snake: Origin", "White Snake 2: The Rise of the Green Snake", and "Chang'an 30000 Miles" that incorporate digital ink animation. The 2023 release of "Deep Sea" is a groundbreaking use of "particle ink" technology, constructing colorful deep-sea wonders through hundreds of layers of particle effects. However, while digital technology innovation has brought new possibilities for the expression of ink animation, there are also some creations that overly focus on the sensory stimulation of visual representation, only drawing on the outer shell of ink and neglecting the inherent creativity, resulting in the crisis of the unique spiritual core in the ink and wash spirit of ink animation being dissolved. The aesthetic interest, philosophical depth, and humanistic spirit are difficult to compare with classic ink and wash animation works. Therefore, in order for the current ink animation and even animation industry to break through traditional visual presentation methods, create more innovative art forms, and adhere to the original spiritual core of traditional ink animation, it is necessary to deeply understand the deep logic of Chinese traditional aesthetics and explore the contemporary language of ink animation in production techniques, storytelling, and artistic conception creation. The root of the dilemma in contemporary ink animation creation lies in the imbalance between technology and art. Ink animation originates from traditional Chinese ink painting art, and its unique artistic characteristics, namely natural ink color immersion, tranquil and distant artistic conception creation, dynamic and elegant brushstrokes, and grand and lofty aesthetic interest, constitute the most essential aesthetic features of this art form. With the popularization of professional animation software such as CTP, Maya, 3DStudioMax, the production efficiency of ink animation has significantly improved, technical bottlenecks have been constantly broken through, and application scenarios have been greatly expanded. However, some creators only imitate the traditional ink appearance when applying these technical means, and fail to deeply understand and grasp the most essential aesthetic core of ink animation. When ink and wash animations rely entirely on preset parameters for generation, the strokes that should be dynamic and natural may become mechanical and dull, losing the randomness and vitality unique to hand drawn animation. Especially with 3D digital technology, although it can accurately present spatial hierarchy and rich details, it often can only achieve a "similar shape" and is difficult to capture the essence of traditional ink painting's "writing spirit with form". In this technology oriented creation, the precious aesthetic characteristic of traditional ink painting, which is characterized by vivid charm, has quietly disappeared. So for two-dimensional digital ink animation, we cannot simply be satisfied with software preset effects, but should actively explore how to preserve the random beauty of ink in digital creation. For example, by hand drawing and adjusting the virtual and real changes of character contours frame by frame, deliberately creating subtle differences in ink color intensity, digital works can also present the dynamic charm of traditional ink painting. In the creation of 3D ink animation, it is even more important to be wary of the misconception of excessively pursuing technical authenticity. We can adopt more subtle and restrained expression techniques, such as cleverly leaving white space in the composition, highlighting the vivid and lively portrayal of character shapes, and so on. The deeper issue in the development of ink wash animation lies in how to strengthen the cultural expression of ink wash animation while making technological progress and artistic breakthroughs. National emotions, as the cultural foundation, have always been the intrinsic driving force behind the development of Chinese ink animation. Looking back at classic works such as "Little Tadpole Looking for Mom," "Pastoral Flute," "Deer Bell," and "Landscape Love," although there are limitations in their technical expression, they have been able to endure and be widely praised. The fundamental reason for this is that these works have successfully constructed a story world full of national emotions. Taking "Luling" as an example, this work adapted from the legend of the White Deer Academy vividly interprets the philosophical concept of "harmony between heaven and man" in traditional Chinese culture through the emotional thread of a little girl rescuing a white deer and ultimately releasing it back into nature. And "Shanshui Qing" delicately portrays the humanistic spirit of "finding kindred spirits" and "passing on the torch" in Chinese civilization through the inheritance story of an old qin player and a young fisherman. The process of old qin players searching for inheritors is not only a story of artistic transmission, but also a poetic presentation of the spirit of traditional Chinese teacher ethics. The success of these classic works inspires us that excellent ink wash animation should take Chinese stories as the bone and national spirit as the soul, and through narrative methods rich in Eastern aesthetic characteristics, bring the audience into a unique aesthetic experience, and subtly convey the values and concepts of Chinese culture. In the digital age, we need to protect this cultural gene even more, deepen rather than dilute the expression of national emotions through technological innovation, based on the rich resources of Chinese culture such as traditional folk stories, poetic imagery, and philosophical ideas, deeply explore the spiritual connotation of Chinese stories, innovate modern expression methods, and make the art form of ink animation always radiate unique Eastern artistic charm. Overall, Chinese ink wash animation has encountered many difficulties in its long development process and is constantly exploring innovative paths in dialogue with the times, which has enabled it to maintain a certain influence in today's constantly iterating production technology and increasingly diverse art forms. This path provides important guidance for the progress of the current animation industry. Only by finding a balance between technology and art, tradition and modernity, national emotions and world expression, can we truly achieve the creative transformation and innovative development of ink animation. In the future, we look forward to seeing more excellent works that not only inherit the essence of ink painting art, but also demonstrate the spirit of the times, so that this unique art form can shine more brilliantly on the world animation stage, injecting new vitality into the contemporary dissemination of excellent traditional Chinese culture. This is not only a tribute to the artistic wisdom of predecessors, but also a continuous inheritance and promotion of the spirit of Chinese aesthetics. (New Society)