Cats have long been part of the lives and imaginations of humans. Egyptians worshiped the cat goddess Bastet, Persians feared these animals as potentially evil, Chinese aristocrats prized them for their rarity, American Puritans associated them with witchcraft, while the…
Animation and animals, Cats in animation
“The Most Savage of All Animals.” The Deserved Distress of Disney’s Dastardly Cats?
by Rebecca Rose Stanton • November 11, 2019 • 2 Comments
“In creating new characters for our cartoon films, one of our main sources of inspiration has been the world of animals. And we’ve always been very much impressed with the cat family. This group of carnivora includes more than forty…
Animation and animals, Cats in animation
Cats and Animation: A Brief Hisstory
by Mihaela Mihailova • November 4, 2019 • 2 Comments
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…
Conference report
An Undergraduate Perspective on the 2019 Animation and Public Engagement Symposium
by Julio Soto and Samuel Price • October 28, 2019 • 0 Comments
Thursday 19th to Saturday 21st September, Texas Tech University The 2019 Animation and Public Engagement Symposium (APES) held at Texas Tech University in Lubbock – thanks, among others, to the support of the Society for Animation Studies – brought together…
Animation and Paratextuality, Animation Franchises and the Studio System
The Evolution of the Disney Princess Franchise Part II: The End of an Era?
by Kodi Maier • October 21, 2019 • 2 Comments
Thanks to its legacy of animated fairy tale films, Disney will always have princesses. But will it always have the Disney Princess franchise? In an attempt to come to grips with her feelings about the astonishingly lucrative line of merchandise,…
Sound and Music
Remixing Fyodor D.: The Sound of National Character(s) in Russian-Language Bungo Stray Dogs AMVs
by Mihaela Mihailova • October 14, 2019 • 5 Comments
Anyone who has ever responded to a call for papers has, at one point or another, experienced the perverse pleasure of stubbornly latching onto a topic that was not mentioned therein and running with it. It was in that contrarian…
Documentary, Sound and Music
Sound as an Indexical Element in Nonfiction Animation
by Sofía Poggi • October 7, 2019 • 0 Comments
Indexes, icons, and symbols. According to Charles Sanders Peirce’s semiotic theory (1974), we can identify three basic types of signs: indexes, icons, and symbols. Indexes, such as photos, videos, and films, have a factual connection with their objects since they…
Sound and Music
Synchronization and Synchresis: Avoiding ‘Mickey-Mousing’ in Sound Design
by Andrew Connor • September 30, 2019 • 1 Comment
When designing sound for animation, especially when you have some latitude in interpreting the visuals against your fully designed soundscape, there can be a tendency on trying to match up everything you see on screen with a direct sonic match.…
Genesis of New Animated Works, Sound and Music
Crystal Clear: From Music to Animation
by Rosalie Loncin • September 23, 2019 • 0 Comments
Animation always had close links with sound and music. Synchronism provides a means of rich formal experimentations. It is particularly striking in the field of the music video where the progression of the music itself often determines the progression, the…
Sound and Music
Steamboat Willie: Playing Now and Forever at Disneyland’s Main Street Cinema
by William McCarthy • September 16, 2019 • 0 Comments
Steamboat Willie, the first fully synchronized animated film that also introduced Mickey and Minnie Mouse, was first publicly presented on November 18, 1928, at Universal’s Colony Theater in New York City. Unlike all other iterations of Disneyland around the world,…