The purpose of this post is to describe 10X10, an ongoing project initiated at Edinburgh College of Art, that each year brings animators and composers from a range of European universities together in a virtualized collaborative process. Currently, this project…
Book Review
Animation Reinvented: Play and Nostalgia Meet Pop Art and Consumerism
by Pamela O'Brien • March 25, 2019 • 1 Comment
Almost 24 years ago, in November 1995, audiences flocked to the movie theater to see a new kind of animated film: one not drawn by hand, but created entirely within a computer. While some may have gone due to the…
European Animation, Sound and Music
‘La Seine and I’: Adapting an Animated French Musical for English-speaking Audiences
by Louise Milsom • March 18, 2019 • 3 Comments
The practice of dubbing over European productions, as with all dubbed foreign language productions, risks a potential disconnect between the spoken language and opposing cultural references within the diegetic world, ranging from instances of untranslated writing to a specific international…
"National" Animation, European Animation
“Scroogin on a Greg”: The Absurd in Scottish Animated Comedy
by Nichola Dobson • March 11, 2019 • 3 Comments
The notion of the Scottish Animated comedy of the title is as unclear as the first part of the title. Is there such a genre? Is there a national identity inherent in a body of work? If so, can it…
European Animation
A Proposed Framework for Contemporary European Feature Animation: First Thoughts
by Vassilis Kroustallis • March 4, 2019 • 1 Comment
Let’s start with some numbers. 250 animated features were produced in Europe (36 countries) between 2010 and 2014, according to the European Audiovisual Observatory (the corresponding number during the 1989-1998 period: 46) [1]. 1 Cannes Jury Prize (for Marjane Satrapi’s…
Book Review, Documentary
Animating the Documentary
by Robert Musburger • February 25, 2019 • 0 Comments
Review of Nea Ehrlich and Jonathan Murray (eds.). Drawn from Life: Issues and Themes in Animated Documentary Cinema. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019. This book project evolved from a collection of proceedings during a 2011 conference held at Edinburgh University…
Adaptation, Early Animation
British Animation After the War: ‘Pip, Squeak and Wilfred’ and Comic Strip Adaptation
by Malcolm Cook • February 18, 2019 • 2 Comments
Among the many recent commemorations of the centenary of First World War, its implications for animation history have received scant attention. In Britain the war stimulated considerable production of animated cartoons between 1914 and 1918, as explored in my recent…
Early Animation
Aesthetics of Pre-Rubber Hose Studio Animation
by Paul Taberham • February 11, 2019 • 2 Comments
I will begin with the observation that there is no standardized name with a widely accepted currency to describe the prevailing style which began with the inception of studio animation. The emergence of Bray Productions in 1914 marks the beginning…
Early Animation
Three Lives of Krazy Kat (Part II)
by Nicholas Sammond • February 4, 2019 • 2 Comments
Krazy first became animated during the second age of Krazy Kat, between 1916 and 1925—initially by Hearst-Vitagraph and Hearst’s International Film Service, then by John Randolph Bray, then by Margaret Winkler and Charles Mintz. Of all of these, the Hearst…
Early Animation
Three Lives of Krazy Kat (Part I)
by Nicholas Sammond • January 28, 2019 • 1 Comment
This is a post about the 3 Ages of Krazy Kat in Two Movements. Part I considers the underpinnings of criticism of the comic strip and its animated version, and the importance of race to that criticism. Part II will…