In the last decade or so it has become not so unusual for mockumentary-style paratexts to be created for non-mockumentary animated features. For instance, to promote the home media release of Wreck-It Ralph (2012, by Rich Moore), the Walt Disney…
Last month, I wrapped up a PhD thesis looking at DreamWorks’ influence on the prevailing aesthetic trends in the American computer-animated features of the 21st century. I have spent many words examining how, with films like Antz (1998), Shrek (2001),…
2012 represented something of a bumper year for animated film production in Hollywood. A stream of commercially-successful computer-animated films – which included Walt Disney’s Wreck-It Ralph (Rich Moore, 2012), Illumination Entertainment’s Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax (Chris Renaud, 2012), and Blue…
The stability of animation as a viable economic industry was immeasurably supported and strengthened by the Walt Disney Studios’ aspirations to innovate. The desire of Disney (the man and the company) to harness the possibilities of technology during cinema’s first…
In 1932 Walt Disney tapped Herman “Kay” Kamen to be his first licensing representative in the character division of Walt Disney Productions. In Kamen’s days – and for a few decades after – Disney did not market their products specifically…
If it is difficult to imagine today the impact that Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937, by David Hand) had in the United States at the end of the 1930s, it is even more difficult to consider the effects it had…
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, or “Disney’s folly” as critics called it, was the Walt Disney Company’s first animated feature-film, but with a budget of over $1.5 million it was in no way a sure success. Walt, however, was…
Friday 29th September, Canterbury Christ Church University This year’s Canterbury Anifest, which celebrated its 10th anniversary, opened with a symposium coinciding with another major animated anniversary: the release of Disney’s first feature-length animated film Snow White and the Seven…
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…
In a clip hosted on Cartoon Brew’s website Caroline Leaf relates her process and the gestation of the mesmerising, darkly etched film Entre Deux Soers (Two Sisters, 1990) stating that her film took ten years to come to fruition. This revelation…
