Throughout the development history of Chinese and Western animated films, Western animated films with Chinese elements as the theme have been developing better and better. Chinese animated films pay attention to the application and expression of traditional elements from the start and create many excellent works, but there are some difficulties in the development in modern times. According to the actual condition that the development of modern Chinese and western animation film is not balanced, this paper selects animated film as the research topic, analyzes the application and expression of traditional elements in Chinese and Western animated films aiming to find out gaps in the development of Chinese and Western animated films. It is hoped to provide a useful reference for the development of Chinese animated films