Animation education today often begins not with pencils or paper, but with software. Many students arrive expecting that animation should be produced seamlessly by machine, efficient, polished, and screen-ready from the start. Manuals like Richard Williams’ The Animator’s Survival Kit (2001) or Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston’s Illusion of Life (1981) remain important guides to the craft, but they sit uneasily alongside the expectation of digital immediacy. What risks being lost is the slower, tactile process of learning by hand, where mistakes, experiments, and physical engagement once played a central role.
In many universities today, opportunities for physical making are diminishing. Budgets for analogue labs, darkrooms, and specialist equipment are steadily reduced, with digital provision expected to take their place. While digital tools are powerful, they can narrow the scope of how students learn. Without contact with material, new animators can miss the chance to test themselves against resistance, the scratch of film, the smear of paint, or the unpredictability of clay. These tactile encounters offer more than just variety; they provide a form of relief from the pressure to produce seamless, portfolio-ready work. In error and accident, students often discover new rhythms, textures, and methods of thinking both in theory and practice.
Animation made in error should not be seen as wasted effort. Walter Benjamin’s reflections on mechanical reproduction remind us that mass production risks stripping art of its “aura” (Benjamin, 1936). By contrast, the smudge, scratch, or fingerprint reasserts the presence of the maker. Jan Švankmajer’s Dimensions of Dialogue (1982) or Vicky Smith’s Noisy Licking, Dribbling and Spitting (2014) remind us that animation is not simply about technical control, but about an embodied negotiation with material. These traces are not mistakes to be edited out; they are evidence of knowledge gained through touch and a form of ownership over material work in an era increasingly shaped by digital reproduction and AI.
Figure 1. Jan Švankmajer, Dimensions of Dialogue (1982).
Figure 2. Vicky Smith, Noisy Licking, Dribbling and Spitting (2015).
This matters all the more in a culture defined by curated feeds and flawless reels. Many students arrive with a sense that their work must be polished and perfected before it is even seen. Tactile methods counter that pressure. Jennifer West’s Nipple Film (2018), for example, foregrounds gestures that might appear unruly or imperfect, yet it is precisely this refusal of polish that makes the work powerful. As Mihailova (2018) argues, digital pipelines often create illusions of mastery and control; tactile practice instead teaches resilience and adaptability, allowing students to embrace uncertainty as part of their learning. Learning to live with uncertainty in an uncertain world is not only necessary but valuable.
The benefits of this approach are not only aesthetic but pedagogical. For students, tactile animation becomes a way of thinking through materials, what Laura Marks (2000) has described as “haptic visuality,” where vision itself operates as a tactile sense. To scratch film directly, as another animator Ross Hogg often does in his practice, is to learn from the unexpected: a line breaks, a pattern emerges, a rhythm forms that could not have been planned in advance. These are skills of adaptability, patience, and discovery, qualities as vital as technical proficiency.
Figure 3. Ross Hogg, 4:3 (2019).
To reintroduce touch into animation education is not a nostalgic return to outmoded tools, but a necessary act of resistance against the erasure of embodied knowledge and the idea that art must be perfect to matter. In our academic spaces, we need to ensure that students have the chance to counter the disembodiment of digital workflows with experiences of touch. To learn through error and imperfection is not to fail, but to resist the demand for seamlessness. It is a reminder that animation gains depth when practice values the body as much as the image, and process as much as outcome.
References
Benjamin, W. (1936) The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.
Marks, L.U. (2000) The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment and the Senses. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Mihailova, M. (2018) ‘The Mastery Machine: Digital Animation and Fantasies of Control’, Animation: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 8(2), pp. 42–146.
Smith, V. (2014) Noisy Licking, Dribbling and Spitting [Film]. Available at: https://vimeo.com/134938105
Švankmajer, J. (1982) Dimensions of Dialogue [Film].
West, J. (2018) Nipple Film [Film].
Williams, R. (2001) The Animator’s Survival Kit. London: Faber & Faber.
Thomas, F. and Johnston, O. (1981) The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation. New York: Abbeville Press.
Stanchfield, W. (2009) Drawn to Life: 20 Golden Years of Disney Master Classes. Oxford: Focal Press.
Grace Brennan is a lecturer and researcher in animation and visual communication. Her work explores tactile animation pedagogies, embodied knowledge, and interdisciplinary approaches to creative education. With teaching experience across foundation, undergraduate, and postgraduate levels, she has developed curricula that integrate analogue and digital methods, supporting students to engage critically with process as well as outcome. Grace has worked with institutions including Ravensbourne University and the University of Greenwich, and is currently developing her research on haptic learning and animation as a framework for inclusive pedagogy.