If eyes are the “mirror of the soul”, Disney’s princess Sofia the First might be the incarnation of film histories stereotypical “woman without secrets”. This predominantly female protagonist, often found in romantic comedies, portrays a lovable, clumsy character displaying an…
Fantasy/Animation
Mac Orlan’s ‘Social Fantastic’ and Animation
by Barnaby Dicker • October 22, 2015 • 0 Comments
My small contribution to the Fantasy/Animation proceedings has been to think through animation’s place within what Pierre Mac Orlan (pseudonym of Pierre Dumarchey, 1882-1970) termed the ‘social fantastic’; a concept he developed, principally, over the 1920s and 1930s. At the…
Fantasy/Animation
The challenges in creating a CGI art house movie for the masses
by Paul Charisse • October 16, 2015 • 0 Comments
Making feature films is expensive and making animated CGI feature films is very, very expensive. Films that fall under the banner of “Art House” traditionally don’t have the budget of their blockbuster counterparts. So does a film that attempts to…
Fantasy/Animation
How can we understand Lotte Reiniger’s fantasy fairy-tales in context?
by Caroline Ruddell • October 9, 2015 • 1 Comment
In 1923 Lotte Reiniger began production on her animated feature film The Adventures of Prince Achmed, which was finally released in 1926. It has often been noted that her friend and collaborator Walter Ruttman is said to have been upset…
Children's Animation
Early Years Animation as Ambient Experience
by Joe Darlington • October 2, 2015 • 0 Comments
You can imagine the scene – perhaps you’re living it now – with the infant sat captivated by the shifting shapes moving on the screen and the parent behind them, busy with another task, not concentrating on the screen but…
Children's Animation
RIP Saturday Morning: The Changing Face of Children’s Broadcasting
by Amy Ratelle • September 22, 2015 • 3 Comments
Like many other people of a certain (Gen X) age, tuning into the Saturday morning time slot was directly responsible for igniting my love for all things animated. It was with great dismay, then, that I read the news last…
Children's Animation
Planes, trains and automobiles; anthropomorphized vehicles in children’s animation (but mum it’s educational!)
by Nichola Dobson • September 4, 2015 • 3 Comments
This is a big topic to put into a short blog post and I have no intention on covering the complexities of the creepiness of the CG Thomas the Tank Engine with his juvenile voice versus the original stop motion…
Adaptation
From The Lego Movie to Emoji: Adapting the Unadaptable
by Sam Summers • August 25, 2015 • 1 Comment
Late last month it was announced that Sony Pictures Animation spent nearly a million dollars on the rights to a movie pitch revolving around Emoji, those colourful little icons inserted into text messages when mere words are not enough to…
Adaptation
Motion comics: Appropriating and adapting comic book artwork
by Craig Smith • August 13, 2015 • 5 Comments
While certain comic book narratives have already been adapted into various film franchises, televised cartoons, webcomics and interactive experiences, the emergence of the motion comic has further transformed the relationship between the comic book medium and moving image culture. It…
Adaptation
Adapting Superman and the idea of medium specificity
by Malcolm Cook • August 3, 2015 • 2 Comments
When my co-author, Max Sexton, and I started researching and writing our recently published book Adapting Science Fiction To Television: Small Screen, Expanded Universe (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015) we kept returning to a central concept: medium specificity. The…