In the beginning was the voice. The voice was that of the characters, and the very world in which animated series exist. The creators heard it, and with their pens and paintbrushes, they made the visual aspect of it real.…
Acting and Performance
Motion capture; the inner life of the marionette.
by Steve Hawley • September 16, 2013 • 1 Comment
Actor (2013) is a 12 minute film where a performer wanders round a space reciting the final chapter of Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange[i]. His performance, guided by an unseen director, was recorded not by a film camera, but by…
Acting and Performance
Animated Performance – Reflections on an Interpretational Framework
by Chris Pallant • September 9, 2013 • 0 Comments
A pig that doesn’t fly is just a pig. So says the eponymous Porco Rosso. I have suggested elsewhere (Pallant, 2012) the need to recognise the tension that underpins animated performance, whereby actorly and animatorly performance occupy two extremes of…
Acting and Performance
The performative origins of animation
by Malcolm Cook • September 2, 2013 • 5 Comments
Animation, by any definition, begins with a performance. This is equally true of animation’s history as it is of any individual film’s production. Especially important was the lightning cartoon or sketch, which played a vital role in the early development…
Advertising and Promotion
How to tease your dragon: computer-animated film promotion
by Christopher Holliday • August 26, 2013 • 2 Comments
Computer-animated films are emblematic of the intensification of what Thomas Schatz calls the “franchise mentality” in the conglomerate era of Millenial Hollywood.[i] Indeed, a computer-animated film rarely exists in isolation. Most have theatrically-released sequels and prequels (and in some instances…
Advertising and Promotion
Books on Screen: Animating the written
by Ed Vollans • August 19, 2013 • 1 Comment
E-books, paperback, hardback… books come in all shapes and sizes, yet publishers are turning to short form audio-visual texts to promote products. Variously called booktalks, vidlits, book trailers, and commercials, these texts conceptually if not technically, animate the product within…
Advertising and Promotion
Brave New World of Promotions: The Animated Mockbuster
by Timothy Jones • August 12, 2013 • 0 Comments
It’s summer 2012 and you’re in the supermarket checkout line. You see a DVD for a new animated film. A courageous red-headed princess from a far-away kingdom goes on a magical journey to save her parents. You’ve heard of this…
Advertising and Promotion
Paratexts and branding in DirtGirlWorld
by Paul Ward • August 5, 2013 • 0 Comments
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’…