It is an understatement to say dealing with death is a difficult thing. The 2017 short film Negative Space by Max Porter and Ru Kuwahata is reminiscent of the mental headspace where one may try to recall the rose-tinted memories…
The Tale of the Princess Kaguya is a film directed by Isao Takahata in 2013, and it is based on a Japanese folktale called “The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter.” Commenting on the consequences of prioritizing wealth, the film portrays…
The final assignment in my undergraduate Animation Studies course is film analysis. The students use an animation of their choice as a primary source to analyze and draw connections with the content studied in class. Throughout the semester, students read,…
In the first part of this two-part blog post, the chronological and the spirit timelines of Grave of the Fireflies were located and defined, with the aim of showcasing how Plantinga’s concept of the spillover effect is found and works…
A graveyard: autumn fireflies, two or three Gensho, 1742 In this two-part blog post, I will use the story structure of Hotaru no Haka (Grave of the Fireflies, Isao Takahata, 1988) to highlight how in the two identifiable story timelines…
This blog theme is part of an emerging project that explores what image-oriented disciplines like Art History, Media and Film Studies contribute to the academic and public debate about AI, specifically what it means to conceptualize AI as a cultural…
The connection between AI and animation is currently widely discussed with regard to the influence of machine learning technologies on animation production (e.g., see The Next Leap: How A.I. will change the 3D industry – Andrew Price). What animation is…
The digital humans are among us. In February of 2021, Epic Games, developers of the Unreal Engine, a leading video game software engine, announced the impending launch of its MetaHuman Creator application. “Creating truly convincing digital humans is hard,” acknowledged…
Envisioners press buttons to inform, in the strictest sense of that word, namely, to make something improbable out of possibilities. They press buttons to seduce the automatic apparatus into making something that is improbable within its program. They press buttons…
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…
