The Peer-reviewed Open Access Online Journal for Animation History and Theory – ISSN 1930-1928
Or: Why the commissar shouldn’t vanish “Truth is strange, stranger than fiction.” William Makepeace Thackeray, The tremendous adventures of Major Gahagan (Thackeray 1921, 1) In spring 2008, a vociferous discussion erupted on the Society for Animation Studies’ mailing list on the subject of an extensive definition of animation. More technically-oriented explanations clashed with highly theoretical […]
Theories of spectatorship and cinema are nothing new. In fact, they abound. On the other hand, theories of spectatorship and animation are still rare. Rarer still are theories that implicate animation and cinema, including in the area of spectatorship. For us, beyond as well as between theories of cinema spectatorship that attribute a pure passivity […]
Ulysses 31, a Televised Re-interpretation of Homer’s Classic Myth This paper gives an overview of the animated series Ulysses 31 (1981), a French-Japanese co-production based on the epic poem The Odyssey, which introduced children and young audiences to Greek myths, relocating the original narratives into futuristic contexts such as the 31st century. Twenty-five years later […]
Animation Readership/Authorship on the Internet Introduction Traditional platforms for animation, such as broadcast television or cinema, are rapidly becoming obsolete as a new type of spectator demands more choice, the ability to interact with animated content and access to global distribution for their own user-generated work. Audiences are no longer satisfied with receiving a top […]
In the film industry, historically it seems to be a truism that women have not occupied major positions. Although they have participated in the profession, there has been a relatively small number of female producers, directors, and head writers for many years. A similarly small number of women have held positions of influence in the […]
Ganime is a new corporate project to develop the features of selective animation to provide a more flexible category of anime. Ganime was created jointly by Toei Animation and the publisher Gentosha. The overall project is to promote auteurism in animation by encouraging creators to have the freedom to exercise their imagination instead of conforming […]
Linda Willams (1998) defines melodrama as “a peculiarly democratic and American form that seeks dramatic revelation of moral and emotional truths through a dialectic of pathos and action” (p. 42). This emphasis on moral and emotional truth, as opposed to cinematic realism or adherence to historical fact positions the figure of the “suffering innocent” (p. […]
Music videos have been being made since the mid 1960s and had their breakthrough in the mid 1970s. Since then it has been the main marketing tool for breaking new pop and rock artists in the international market. When MTV opened on August 1st 1981 by showing the video Video Killed the Radio Star (Russel […]
Making a “film” today rarely involves a journey to the lab as images are more often recorded digitally and not on celluloid. Even video’s electromagnetic record is transformed to bits and bytes. There is no frame to splice. The visual material exists as a virtual reference only. As McLuhan points out, new media doesn’t replace […]
“The cartoon is a playful art. […] A false devotion to the cinematic approach inexorably stifles the draftman’s imagination.” Lindvall & Melton (1997, p. 204) “Once upon a time, or maybe twice…” George Dunning, Yellow Submarine, 1968 Introduction Representation in the visual arts, such as cinematography – and in particular animation – contains a degree […]