Taiwan’s The National Palace Museum initiated a series of six high-resolution long scroll painting animations. Using the latest technology, several high-resolution 1080 HD projectors seamlessly unfold sceneries from classical long scroll paintings on the wall. The painting animation series reproduces nine popular paintings and calligraphy, including Along the River During Qingming(Qing court artists), Spring Dawn in the Han Palace (Qiu Ying), Imitating Zhao Bosu’s Latter Ode on the Red Cliff (Wen Zhengming), Syzygy of the Sun, Moon, and Five Planets (Xu Yang), Departure Herald (Anonymous), Return Clearing(Anonymous) and Activities of the Twelve Lunar Months (Qing court artists), One Hundred Horses (Giuseppe Castligione), The Cold Food Observance (Su Shi), Poem in Seven-character Verse (Huang Tingjian).
Inspired by historical material related to the artworks, the animations faithfully present the true spirit of the original paintings and their most attractive parts. A fascinating feature of the long scroll painting is its ability to simultaneously manifest chronological continuity and segmentation. As a result of the unique painting scale and traditional right to left reading direction, painting compositions unfurl accordingly and emphasize horizontal relationships. Oftentimes, scenes occurring at different points in time were depicted on a single scroll.