In the darkness, a skeleton emerges on the screen and then jolts into a series of poses, lifting a leg, arms thrown out to one side, squatting, and popping off its head in both bony hands. The skeleton is dancing.…
Giannalberto Bendazzi was uniquely capable of being both entirely approachable and formidable at the same time. Speaking to colleagues as I prepared this text, the daunting email subject “why don’t you write a book on x,” was frequently mentioned. As…
In 1910, Congregation minister Herbert Jump published his Religious Possibilities of the Motion Picture, preaching boldly for producing short visual parables that could teach faith and ethics. Throughout the 20th century, numerous animated films sought to inculcate viewers in matters…
Ireland’s geographical position is an important factor to consider when taking into account the animation practices and techniques that were developing in both North America and Europe during the early-twentieth-century. Irish artists and filmmakers traveled widely for education and exhibition…
In memory of my friend Hannah Frank and her cat Ingeborg Two decades into the twenty-first century, animated fauna is thriving. A famous nonagenarian mouse with infinite spending power holds the American entertainment market ever more securely in its white-gloved…
According to a 2015 Los Angeles Times article, the majority of animation production students in the US are female, yet they comprise less than a fifth of the workforce in creative roles in the American animation industry. This situation is…
How can archivists, academics and practitioners collaborate to promote and make animation archives easily accessible through workshops, cataloguing, and displaying data? Knowledge is vital in terms of looking after vulnerable media, communicating on what material should be kept for permanent…
At the 25th Annual SAS conference in LA last month, Tom Sito delivered the opening keynote entitled ‘Moving Innovation, A History of Computer Animation’. In it he examined the history of computer animation – which many of us think we…
Musicals and animated films, stylized and fantastical forms both, have displayed a mutual affinity since sound technology permitted their combination. Several live-action musicals have famously included animated sequences, most notably MGM’s Anchors Aweigh (1944), where Gene Kelly dances with Jerry…
If I’ve heard this question asked once of an animator, I’ve heard it asked a thousand times. Not “When…?”, “Where…?”, or “Why…?”, but “How…?”. Animation often seems to revolve around technology and technique (a consideration of the distinction and relationship…
