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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Review of Raz Greenberg. Hayao Miyazaki: Exploring the Early Work of Japan’s Greatest Animator, New York/London: Bloomsbury, 2018. There are those who advocate history-less animation, curricula that focus on the teaching of techniques and technology. In his book, Hayao Miyazaki:…
Winsor McCay’s Little Nemo (1911), How a Mosquito Operates (1912), and Gertie the Dinosaur (1914) are regularly singled out as the most significant achievements in American animation of the early 1910s, often in comparison to the apparent deficiencies of other…
‘Memory is a perpetually actual phenomenon, a band tying us to the eternal present […] Memory nourishes recollections that may be out of focus or telescopic, global or detached, particular or symbolic [… It] takes root in the concrete, in…
