Evolution and coding of mythological heritage imagery in Chinese animated film posters: computational analysis, 1941–2025

Abstract

Understanding how mythological imagery is visually translated in modern mass media requires moving beyond case-based interpretation and subjective image analysis. This study constructs a corpus of 496 posters from 110 Chinese mythological animated films released between 1941 and 2025 and combines computational visual analysis with statistical testing to examine their long-term evolution. The findings show that mythological heritage imagery in these posters did not follow a single linear trajectory. Rather, it underwent period-specific functional shifts within a relatively stable mythological color spectrum: early posters emphasized the visual recognition of mythological figures, symbolic objects, and traditional colors; posters around 2015 showed greater color intensity and affective emphasis; and posters after 2019 increasingly foregrounded information hierarchy and systematic layout organization. This study reveals the visual continuity and period-specific patterns of visual coding of mythological heritage imagery and provides a reproducible methodological framework for computational heritage research on modern visual cultural materials.