Animation recent issues

Animated Expressions: Expressive Style in 3D Computer Graphic Narrative Animation

Power, P. — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 04:26:23 PDT

The development of 3D animation systems has been driven primarily by a hyper-realist ethos, and 3D computer graphic (CG) features have broadly complied with this agenda. As a counterpoint to this trend, some researchers, technologists and animation artists have explored the possibility of creating more expressive narrative output from 3D animation environments. This article explores 3D animation aesthetics, technology and culture in this context. Synthesizing research in CG, neuroesthetics, art history, semiotics, psychology and embodied approaches to cognitive science, the nature of naturalistic vis-àvis expressive visual styles is analysed, with particular regard to expressive communication and cues for emotional engagement. Two foundations of naturalistic 3D CG, single-point perspective and photorealistic rendering, are explored in terms of expressive potential, and the conclusion considers the future for an expressive aesthetics in 3D CG animation.

Soft Body Dynamics After 9/11

Warren-Crow, H. — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 04:26:23 PDT

Endowing buildings with the capacity for movement and transformation, animated architecture represents the expansion of animation from cinematic and televisual space to real-space environments. A key example of animation in architecture is Oosterhuis.nl's proposal for a new World Trade Center. In line with similar work by fellow Dutch firm NOX, Oosterhuis.nl's Ground Zero embraces animation through references to mobility, liveliness and metamorphosis. It points to the prominence of animated form in contemporary design practice and the ubiquitous use of animation software in the process of architectural design. At the same time, Ground Zero reveals post-9/11 anxieties surrounding the soft and tender flesh of the object world. The author's analysis of Ground Zero's discursive production of life maps crucial changes in our spatial imagination and the politics of form.

Beowulf: The Digital Monster Movie

Brown, W. — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 04:26:23 PDT

Robert Zemeckis' Beowulf (2007) is the latest film made using motion capture technology, a film that tells the story of a hero's quest to defeat a series of monsters.This article examines not only the thematic role of monstrosity in the film, but also the way in which the film's very construction, through motion capture and CGI, can be understood as monstrous. That is, after Deleuze's Cinema 2: The Time Image (1989[1985]), Beowulf can be understood as typifying a cinema that has seen a shift from montage to montrage, a cinema that shows. Analysing the aesthetics of monstrosity in Beowulf, the author also considers how the film's motion capture synthespian performances can be understood as comic through Henri Bergson's (1912[1900]) theory of laughter, which suggests that humans laugh at mechanized human beings.

What Race Do They Represent and Does Mine Have Anything to Do with It? Perceived Racial Categories of Anime Characters

Lu, A. S. — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 04:26:23 PDT

Is the intended race of anime characters distinguishable because of their facial features or are they too `international' to tell? This study addressed this question empirically by comparing the intended racial categories of static frontal portraits of 341 anime characters randomly selected from anime produced between 1958 and 2005 with the perceptions of 1,046 raters. Results showed that, although the race of more than half of the anime characters was originally designed to be Asian and only a small fraction were intended to be Caucasian, many were perceived as Caucasian by the largely Caucasian raters. Response patterns also indicated `Own Race Projection (ORP)', i.e. perceivers frequently perceived anime characters to be of their own racial group. Implications for anime's international dissemination are discussed.

Borderline Animation

Fleisch, T. — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 04:26:23 PDT

As an artist and filmmaker working in what is notion-ally called `animation', Thorsten Fleisch works at intersections of art, science and technology. His works belong to a genre of Structural—Materialist film as well as being highly self-reflexive investigations into the minute workings of natural phenomena. In this article, Fleisch reveals some of the underlying ideas and concepts of his films as well as the techniques involved in creating them. Fleisch has been making experimental films for more than a decade now; most of them fall under the general rubric of `animation' but their production processes and techniques belie an unusual complexity of source materials, concepts and techniques. These processes are very important to the result as Fleisch tries to find unusual ways to generate images. Fleisch's work is notable for its aesthetic and technically masterful treatment of organic materials (blood, skin, ashes) and scientific phenomena (fractals, crystals, voltage). This richly illustrated article contains many colourful details about the following films: K.I.L.L. — Kinetic Image Laboratory/Lobotomy (1998), Bloodlust (1998), Silver Screen (2000), Skinflick (2002), Gestalt (2003), Friendly Fire (2003), Kosmos (2004) and Energie! (2007).

Review: David Whitley, The Idea of Nature in Disney Animation. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008. 162 pp. ISBN: 0754660850 (hbk)

Willoquet-Maricondi, P. — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 04:26:23 PDT

Review: Yann Beauvais (ed.), Paul Sharits. Dijon: Les presses du reel, 2008. 200 pp., 112 col. illus. ISBN: 978--2--84066--243--3 28

Windhausen, F. — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 04:26:23 PDT

Review: Peter Hames (ed.), The Cinema of Jan Svankmajer: Dark Alchemy (Directors' Cuts), 2nd edn. London: Wallflower Press, 2008. 224 pp. ISBN: 978--905674--45--9

Ivins-Hulley, L. — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 04:26:23 PDT

Editorial

Buchan, S. — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 09:08:28 PDT

Line and Colour in The Band Concert

Cubitt, S. — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 09:08:28 PDT

This article addresses the techniques and materials used in the production of The Band Concert (1935), a seven-minute Technicolor Mickey Mouse cartoon. An investigation of the standardization of drawing and line in the context of the histories of technical drawing and the industrialization of animation is followed by a description of the use of colour, particularly of the relation between the inks used on the cels and the dyes used in film prints at the time. The author asks whether it is possible to articulate a materialist theory of the aesthetic, ethical and political meanings of technique and technology without losing sight of the techniques and technologies themselves.

In Memory of Meishu Film: Catachresis and Metaphor in Theorizing Chinese Animation

Weihua Wu, — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 09:08:28 PDT

This article looks at historical catachresis and cultural metaphor in producing and theorizing Chinese meishu (fine arts) film in relation to the socialist, artistic discourses of the ethnic/national style. By investigating some of these issues raised by the Chinese School, the author explores the conceptualization and constitution of meishu film as a powerful metaphor for producing nationalist identity. This identity brings visual arts and the socialist nation-state discourses into a shared space to recreate Chinese aesthetics in animation filmmaking. The author argues that the Chinese meishu film, identified as a unique, nationalized cinematic form in Chinese visual history, conceptualizes and mediates the national/ethnic style, as well as constituting a discourse-based aesthetic school that has helped it survive within socialist culture and politics.

Technologies of Perception: Miyazaki in Theory and Practice

Bigelow, S. J. — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 09:08:28 PDT

The current Western fascination with Japanese animation can be understood in relation to the experience of the digital in cultural production that opens new avenues of understanding about the self-as-subject. Visualization to engage with the image in interactive, virtual environments involves relinquishing control to recognize the individual as emerging through the unique pattern of their relationships, both human and non-human. This reality is articulated in Eastern philosophical notions of interrelatedness and pre-reflective thinking, what Marshall McLuhan called `comprehensive awareness'. The Japanese animator Miyazaki Hayao draws on a Zen-Shinto religious imaginary to empower the individual to relinquish the self. As an alternative politics to the moral confusion of the post-modern age, his practice demonstrates that Walter Benjamin's gamble with cinema is in play.

The Spiritual--Functional Loop: Animation Redefined in the Digital Age

Chow Ka-nin, K. — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 09:08:28 PDT

Can animation bring life to the computer? Can the computer take animation to a new horizon extending from cinema and visual art? This article starts with a scrutiny of the conventional definition of animation and its connection to the continuum of liveliness, followed by an examination of the two furthest points on that scale: lively movement, which is spiritual; and inorganic movement, which is functional. The author shows that, in the digital age, movement of various degrees of liveliness can be significant and meaningful through a wide array of motor—sensory functions. This brings about a new notion of materiality, which constructs an innovative meaning of animation. The author then argues that, when combined with the unique functions of the computer, animation can find a shortcut between the two extremes of liveliness: spirituality and functionality. Therefore, the field of animation could benefit from an expansion of its digital attributes. Finally, the author discusses a corpus of artefacts created in different historical periods and different media that exemplify the spiritual—functional loop.

Review: Desire & Sexuality: Animating the Unconscious, compiled by Jayne Pilling. DVD set (3 discs, {pound}17.99 each) available from the British Animation Awards [http://www.britishanimationawards.com/]

Honess Roe, A. — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 09:08:28 PDT

Review: Aylish Wood, Digital Encounters. London: Routledge, 2007. 188 pp. ISBN 0-415-41066-5

Rehak, B. — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 09:08:28 PDT

Review: Alan Cholodenko (ed.), The Illusion of Life II: More Essays on Animation. Sydney: Power Publications, 2007. 576 pp. ISBN 0-909952-34-5

Sobchack, V. — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 09:08:28 PDT

Editorial

Buchan, S. — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 02:31:17 PDT

`Yeah Looks Like It N'All . . .': The `Live Action' Universe and Abridged Figurative Design and Computer Animation within Modern Toss

Norris, V. — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 02:31:17 PDT

This article will discuss formal aspects of the Channel Four TV show Modern Toss. Through a minimalism in image and dialogue it looks at how a range of characters negotiate miniature social rebellions. What is of interest here is the highly distinctive approach to animation form that utilizes deliberately abstracted figurative designs framed in collusion with previously filmed backgrounds and actors. This specific approach of placing Flash computer figures within an agreed universe accesses, firstly, a sense of `distance' that is pertinent to the show's humorous register. Secondly, this complements the fatalism inherent within the narratives themselves and then, lastly, this process allies the show to the original graphic/web cartoon sources in service of a signature aesthetic endemic to this concept.

The Line and the Animorph or `Travel Is More than Just A to B'

Sobchack, V. — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 02:31:17 PDT

One of the elements that separates live-action, photoreal cinema from animation is the line, a conceptual meta-object that has no existence other than as an idea or a graphic representation. Lines are not essential to photoreal cinema. Using five animated television advertisements for Hilton Hotels made by German animator Raimund Krumme, the essay raises some of the paradoxes inherent in the single, two-dimensional, animated graphic line as both an abstract geometric construct and an eccentric visualization of energy and entropy. What Krumme's animations emphasize (even if in the service of an advertising campaign) is that, never a `thing', the line in motion intends and marks its own differánce and is always more lived and contingent than its geometry would suggest.

The Politics of Media in Stan Vanderbeek's Poemfields

Bartlett, M. — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 02:31:17 PDT

This article provides a context for understanding the series of computer-animated films — Poemfields — that Vanderbeek made at Bell Labs between 1966 and 1969, using the first moving image programming language, Bflix, invented by Bell computer scientist, Ken Knowlton. Through an analysis of these works, the author shows how Vanderbeek's politics were deeply and consciously socialist in orientation, how he aimed at nothing less than changing social consciousness through a radical conception of the then emerging information and communication technologies, and how computerized animation as it was emerging at that moment was central to both of these aims.

Extracinematic Animation: Gregory Barsamian in Conversation with Suzanne Buchan

Barsamian, G. — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 02:31:17 PDT

Gregory Barsamian's strobe-lit kinetic sculptures create an experience that places observers in a perceptual paradox that oscillates between the illusion of animated cinema and the phenomenal presence of real objects that share the viewer's physical presence in space and time. The conversation reveals Barsamian's working methods, his aesthetic and philosophical influences and intentions and his artistic relationship with animated illusion.

Review: Michael Barrier, The Animated Man: A Life of Walt Disney. University of California Press, 2007

Wasko, J. — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 02:31:17 PDT

Review: Chris Gehman and Steve Reinke (eds), The Sharpest Point: Animation at the End of Cinema. Toronto: YYZ Books/Ottawa International Animation Festival, 2005. 288 pp. ISBN: 0--920397--32--8 CAD $24.95, USD $20.95, EU 17.95

Meng, V. — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 02:31:17 PDT

Review: Scott Lash and Celia Lury, Global Culture Industry: The Mediation of Things. Cambridge: Polity, 2007. 250 pp. ISBN: 9--780745--62483--9

Leslie, E. — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 02:31:17 PDT

Review: `William Kentridge: Journey to the Moon/7 Fragments for Georges Melies/Day for Night'. Hamburger Bahnhof -- Museum Fur Gegenwart. Berlin, 7 February -- 6 May 2007. Curated by Melanie Franke and Joachim Jager. All films: 2003, black and white, 16mm and 35mm transferred to DVD and `looped', edited by Catherine Meyburgh; acquisitions of Nationalgalerie, Sammlung Marx (Marx Collection)

Dicker, B. — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 02:31:17 PDT

Editorial

Buchan, S. — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 07:46:49 PDT

From the `Cinematic' to the `Anime-ic': Issues of Movement in Anime

Ruddell, C. — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 07:46:49 PDT

This article explores the way that movement is formally depicted in anime. Drawing on Thomas Lamarre's concepts of the `cinematic' and the `anime-ic', the article interrogates further the differences in movement and action in anime from traditional filmic form. While often considered in terms of `flatness', anime offers spectacle, character development and, ironically, depth through the very form of movement put to use in such texts.The article questions whether the modes of address at work in anime are unique to this form of animation.Taking into account how the terms `cinematic' and `anime-ic' can be understood (and by extension the cinematic and animatic apparatus), the article also begins to explore how viewers might identify with such images.

Star-Spangled Ghibli: Star Voices in the American Versions of Hayao Miyazaki's Films

Denison, R. — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 07:46:49 PDT

This article offers an examination of the use of American stars in re-voicing a set of Japanese animated texts. The author argues that a new industrial, contextual and textual understanding of stardom is required to penetrate the dense network of meanings attached to star voices in animation. Furthermore, she utilizes a mixed textual and contextual approach to several of Studio Ghibli's American DVD releases to consider the markets for and meanings of anime in America. In so doing this article represents an intervention into a range of academic debates around the nature of contemporary stardom and the significance of anime in America.

Nervous Light Planes

Gfader, V. — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 07:46:49 PDT

Electronic streams appear to be most illuminating when they fail or break down. At these moments, they make apparent our desire of wanting to keep continuity, to experience things uninterruptedly. In the contemporary artistic environment marked by electronic pulses and lightscapes, the flickering screen, with its conflicting modes of engagement, provides the thinking of a limit and erasure. Philippe Parreno's analogue line animation What Do You Believe, Your Eyes or My Words? Speaking Drawing: . . . (2007) inhabits such a corruptive site of `no single continuing line' where the various time structures inherent to the work resist to create unity, both in terms of the work's spatiality and its relation to our sense of time. In Semiconductor's digital piece Inaudible Cities: Part One (2002) the flickering strips the image of the failed electronic stream, its supposedly essential element. The animated cityscape presents us with yet another kind of electronic light movement co-dependent on the sonic pressures of an electrical storm. What is expressed is the process of image-forming itself, the image's potential for self-variation which is linked to imagination and Brian Massumi's `vagueness of the virtual'. Referring to notions such as Gilles Deleuze's `point flicker' or Massumi's `imaginative and non-systemic', the article addresses the sensation of flickering as an experience of spacing and rupturing inherent to animation. Not only does this sensation propose animation as an often paradoxical work, but, proposing a particular site its image can occupy, it allows us to think of the animated image as an erasure itself, with its potential of becoming art.

The Many Faces of Internationalization in Japanese Anime

Lu, A. S. — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 07:46:49 PDT

This article explores the internationalization of Japanese anime (animation) in an effort to help explain the cultural politics behind this popular cultural product. The internationalization of anime includes the incorporation of de-Japanized elements into anime's background, context, character design, and narrative organization. A theoretical framework for understanding anime's internationalization is developed, proposing that there are at least three kinds of cultural politics working behind anime's international success: one, de-politicized internationalization, which primarily serves as a commercial tactic to attract international audiences; two, Occidentalized internationalization, which satiates a nationalistic sentiment; three, self-Orientalized internationalization, which reveals a cultural desire to establish Japan as an ersatz Western country in Asia.

Hallucinatory Vision and the Blurring of the Subject in Jeremy Blake's `Time-Based Paintings'

Hertz, B.-S. — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 07:46:49 PDT

From the turn of the 21st century until his death in 200 Jeremy Blake worked at the convergence of animation, digital technology and painting, synthesizing them through the use of cinematic strategies. This article discusses the debt Blake's early abstract works owe to the experimental animated films of the Visual Music artists and American post-war Color Field painters. During this period, Blake applied his exceptional facility with emerging animation software to sequential figure/ground abstractions based on literary narrative structures. Subsequently, Blake shifted from `time-based painting' to richly textured non-narrative biographical sketches created in collaboration with maverick protagonists in contemporary popular music. The visuality of Blake's hallucinatory moving images intensified emotionally as new digital software became available. The deep hybridity of his visual compositions, transmitted through constant fades and overlays of photo-based images and abstracted color patches, doodles and animation characters, create a richly textured bridge between subjective consciousness and the world of appearances.

Review: Animation Universe: The 19th Society for Animation Studies Conference, Portland State University, USA, 29 June to 1 July 2007

Dow, M. V. — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 07:46:49 PDT

Review: Tom Corby (ed.), Network Art: Practices and Positions (Innovations in Art & Design). London: Routledge, 2006. 206 pp., 83 halftone illus. ISBN 978--0415364799 (hbk)

Dieter, M. — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 07:46:49 PDT

Review: French Lunning (ed.) Mechademia, Volume 1: Emerging Worlds of Anime and Manga. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006. 184 pp., 32 b/w and 13 col. illus. ISBN 0--8166--4945--6 $19.95

Thouny, C. — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 07:46:49 PDT