Analysis of the Narrative Types of “Metaphor” in Animated Short Films

The most presented storytelling medium of animation and film are images. The narrative messages that viewers obtain through images are much more rigorous than those from dictation or narration. Therefore, the means to construct story context in an animation narrative is more than the intuitive narrative of character language. Message transmission by hints seems to be an important technique of image narrative in a plot. Potential messages involve metaphors in rhetoric. When applied to an image narrative, linguistic techniques have gone beyond the scope of literal modification. Meaning the viewers’ cognition and past experiences are also involved in the process of image viewing. Therefore, the metaphors in animated movies are a type of narrative produced by multiple elements, as well as a mode of deduction based on real life. According to the related theories of metaphorical mapping, this study explores the analogical narrative process of images in animation cases, as based on Gentner’s structural mapping theory and the blending theory of Fauconnier and Turner. The results of case study show that, in animated movies, analogies are made through similarities in form, meaning the attributes of source and target are blended as the means of metaphor, where the lens movement also contributes to the metaphor of space on the visual psychological level. In summary, this study is expected to serve as a reference for further exploration of the metaphoric narrative of animation in the future.