The Peer-reviewed Open Access Online Journal for Animation History and Theory – ISSN 1930-1928
Something curious happened to visual fine art over the course of the twentieth century, something that did not happen to other art forms.[1] It shed any semblance of a disciplinary base. The term ‘Fine Art’ used to denote the traditional plastic arts – drawing, painting, sculpture – as distinguished, on the one hand, from other […]
Introduction One great challenge a designer working in the motion graphics field may encounter is defining the field itself. Having worked as a broadcast designer in cable television and later, when I entered the academic environment, I constantly confront this issue whenever I am faced with the question: What is motion graphics? Invariably, I hesitate, […]
The art challenges the technology, and the technology inspires the art. John Lasseter Introduction This research aims to shed some light on the relationship between animation and contemporary theatre. It is oriented in two directions; one that involves reading and analysing sources and the other is due to having been part of a team repeatedly […]
When analyzing the animated films of Iurii Norshtein, it is important to consider in depth not the finished product, but the process undertaken by Norshtein to produce the work itself. Many are unaware of Norshtein’s status as an inventor. To achieve the effects that define his films and cement his auteur position, he developed his […]
Norman McLaren was somewhat prescient when, as a young man, he said, “That’s it, that’s what I want to do, make movies […] That’s the art of the future” (McWilliams 1990). The question now is, how prescient can we be about the future of McLaren’s own films? A Guide to the Future A guide to […]
On Begone Dull Care: “Thus, the knife-point was made to slide and move on the surface of the film; my hand pressed, guided, and, as it were, made to ‘dance’ to the rhythm of the music.” (McLaren 1949, p.6) Scottish-Canadian filmmaker Norman McLaren’s work is bound by the notion of performance; he described his own […]
The notion of “Holocaust animation” may seem paradoxical; how can a medium which, in the popular eye, is usually associated with comedy, play and fantasy be used to remember one of the 20th century’s most traumatic events? By examining the textural difference of animation to our lived world in texts such as Silence (Yadin and […]
The Animatic, The Death Drive and The Forest Tent Caterpillar One mid-September morning, Virginia Woolf sat watching a hay-coloured moth flit back and forth across her window, trying to escape into the promise of the warm autumn day. Vibrant despite its meagre, limited existence, the moth struggled valiantly before weakening and finally succumbing to inevitable […]
Produced and hosted by astronomer and astrophysicist Carl Sagan, the television documentary mini-series Cosmos (1980) aimed to renew scientific interest among the general public, in light of the growing popularity of pseudo-scientific ideas, such as astrology. Since its original broadcast, Cosmos has long been considered a milestone in the scientific documentary genre, due to its […]
Introduction Historically, animated cartoons and movies have been used as ‘propaganda’ in war (Roffat 2011). Some animated films, however, contribute to conveying an anti-war pacifist point of view (Takai 2011). As such, the film Porco Rosso (1992) can be categorized as “anti-war propaganda” (Okuda 2003, p. 144). Although Miyazaki has been attracted by seaplanes designed […]