In his book, Show Sold Separately (2010), Jonathan Gray’s notion of ‘offscreen’ studies has paratextuality at its heart. Simply put, paratexts are simultaneously a part of the text and apart from the text. They are the constellation of material that…
technological developments in animation (post digital)
An Animated Future for 3-D
by Kara Lynn Andersen • July 29, 2013 • 6 Comments
Interest in 3-D images precedes cinema and is ongoing today, but as a commercial venture 3-D film production has waxed and waned several times. But is it possible for 3-D filmmaking to be sustainable as a commercial venture? Rather than…
technological developments in animation (post digital)
Experiments in Motion Graphics – or, when John Whitney met Jack Citron and the IBM 2250
by Richard Stamp • July 29, 2013 • 5 Comments
John Whitney Sr’s first encounter with Dr Jack Citron, a physicist and researcher at IBM Los Angeles, in 1965, led to Whitney’s historic fellowship with the computer corporation between 1966-9. For Whitney, the IBM research grant was the ‘major change’…
technological developments in animation (post digital)
Why we need a new language of cinema.
by Caroline Parsons • July 22, 2013 • 5 Comments
The film scholar David Rodowick, in his Virtual Life of Film, writes that ‘every film is an animated film’ – if the definition of the term animation is to be taken as ‘the automated reconstitution of movement from a succession…
technological developments in animation (post digital)
Taking for granted the digital world
by Nichola Dobson • July 16, 2013 • 0 Comments
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…
technological developments in animation (post digital)
Run Wrake: embracing digital animation
by Craig Smith • July 8, 2013 • 0 Comments
When I think about the term ‘digital animation’, the work of the late British animator Run Wrake instantly springs to mind. An early example of his work, Buttmeat (1996), embraces the ability of the drawn line to morph and change…
Sound and Music
The importance of being an independent animator who makes music videos
by Eliska Decka • June 24, 2013 • 1 Comment
As a part of my PhD research, I recently did an interview with two young independent Slovak animators, Michaela Čopíková and Veronika Obertová, who work together as a creative duo called Ove Pictures. When I studied their webpage http://ovepictures.com/ as…
Sound and Music
Neither Fischinger nor McLaren, Visual Music in a different key
by Jean Detheux • June 24, 2013 • 3 Comments
Music informs images just as images inform music. This sounds simple enough, it is a manifestation of an essential (yet often overlooked) aspect of perception, that of “sense-giving” and of “sense-receiving” (Maurice Merleau-Ponty and, of course, Edmund Husserl, did brilliant…
Sound and Music
Animated Sound: Two Approaches (part 2)
by Aimee Mollaghan • June 17, 2013 • 3 Comments
Part two Part one of this two-part post on animated sound focused on the development of animated sound as a compositional tool. The second part of this blog post will outline a second type of animated sound, as developed by…
Sound and Music
The Future of Visual Music
by Diana Reichenbach • June 17, 2013 • 2 Comments
My first experience with a Jordan Belson film forever shaped my own direction as an artist. From the cool, dark theater arose the rumble of ambient sound coupled with intense mixtures of color. Such depth, such motion. His ‘story’ was…