动画电影是一门包含绘画语言与影视语言的综合性艺术，它是由手工或计算机数字技术绘制的一幅幅视觉图像，且是动态的视觉图像。动画作为后工业时代最显著的文化符号，改写了图像与文字之间的从属关系。正如法国美学家勒内·于格所说：“尽管图像作为文化表征的优劣与否依旧是悬而未决的问题，但无从否认的是，它已经用前所未有的高强度改写了文化的每一个层面，已经成为人类认知和阐释世界的主体形式，并为世界带来了新的命名——读图时代。即所谓“我们正在成为视觉媒介化的社会，对世界的理解是通过阅读图像而不是阅读文字而形成的”。在动画电影的图像叙事中，图像可以同语言一样成为叙事的媒介，也可以给观众讲故事、说道理，观众通过观看动态的视觉图像可以对图像语言中的语素形成具有独立语义的“能指”符号。动画电影的图像叙事对象较为丰富，包含角色形象、场景造型、色彩形象、镜语模式等等，堪称视觉艺术真正的集大成者。在此其中最受关注的图像语素就是角色形象，一部优秀的动画影片随着时间的流逝观众可能会忘却其中的故事情节，但经典的动画角色形象却数十年存在于观众头脑的深层记忆中，这也是米老鼠、唐老鸭等经典动画角色形象经年不衰、风靡世界的重要原因。神话题材动画电影中的角色形象又可细分为单纯的人物形象、动物形象以及神怪形象。在神话题材动画电影中，神怪形象出现的频率以及在动画电影中担任的重要地位要远远高于其它两类角色形象，所以本篇论文以神怪形象的图像语言作为重点分析对象。对于中国神话题材动画电影中的神怪形象考察笔者拟从以下几个方面展开，从图像叙事语言的角度分析当代神话题材动画电影中神怪形象的图像语言、影视文本的时空性语素重构对动画图像的视觉转向以及动画的视觉图像艺术风格，探赜神怪形象其传统与当代两个维度的外在艺术形式及内在美学特征的嬗变。

Animated film is a comprehensive art containing the language of painting and film, which is a series of visual images drawn by hand or by computer digital technology. And these visual images are moving. As the most prominent cultural symbol of the post-industrial era, the animation rewrites the subordinate relationship between images and texts. As said by French aesthete Rene Hughe, “Although whether the merits and demerits of the image being the cultural symbol or not are still suspended, there is no denying that it has rewritten each aspect of culture with a strength that never happened before, and it has been the major form of mankind in recognizing and describing the world, and brought a new name for world-the age of image reading. In other words, “We are becoming a visually mediated society, where understanding of the world is formed by reading images rather than reading texts.” In the image narrative of animated films, the image can be the narrative medium, just like language to tell stories and make sense to the audience. Through watching moving visual images, the audience can form a semantic “referential” sign based on the semantic elements in the image language. The objects of narrative images in animated films are rich, including characters, scenes, colors, mirror patterns and so on, which can be called the true masterpiece of visual art. Among these, character is the image element that attracting attention mostly. As time goes by, audiences are probable to forget the plots in an excellent animation film, but the classic animated character can be kept in audiences’ memory for decades, which is also the significant reason for some classic animated characters never fade like Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, etc. The characters of mythological animation films can be subdivided into pure figure image, animal image and gods and spirits image. In mythological animation films, the frequency of gods and spirits image appearing is much higher than the other two kinds of images, as well as the important role it plays. As a consequence, this paper takes the image language of gods and spirits as the key analysis object. And for the gods and spirits images in Chinese mythological animation films, from the perspective of image narrative language, the writer would like to analyze influences of image language of gods and spirits, reconstruction of spatial language elements in film texts in contemporary mythological animation films on visual turn of animated images and the art style of visual images in animation films, and explore the transmutation of the image of gods and spirits in its traditional and contemporary dimensions in terms of external art forms and internal aesthetics.