The new My Little Pony show, subtitled ‘Friendship is Magic’, follows in the footsteps of recent reimagined franchises, from superhero comics, to digital game heroines, to science fiction and action television. While understandably rejecting the ‘dark’ reboot route, a distinct…
"National" Animation
Animation in the Middle East
by Stefanie Van de Peer • May 5, 2014 • 7 Comments
In the Middle East, historically, the relationship between art and religion is complex. Islam declares that Allah is the only image-maker, the only creative and shaping being with divine inspiration. In that context, figurative art has been avoided. Islamic art…
Norman McLaren Centenary: McLaren and Movement
A Reflection On Norman McLaren, George Balanchine And Absolute Ballet
by Aimee Mollaghan • April 28, 2014 • 1 Comment
Norman McLaren infamously posits that he probably became a filmmaker because he had been unable to be a dancer or choreographer. While one can argue that the underlying concern of his work is movement, one can also posit that McLaren’s…
Norman McLaren Centenary: McLaren and Movement
Animating Animation: Abstraction and Embodiment in McLaren’s films and dance tribute NORMAN
by Crystal Chan • April 22, 2014 • 1 Comment
Norman McLaren said “every film is a kind of dance”[1] and that “an abstract film has much greater affinity to music, ballet and dance than it has to any kind of abstract painting.”[2] He said he might have wanted to…
Norman McLaren Centenary: McLaren and Movement
3D or not 3D?
by Alison Reiko Loader • April 14, 2014 • 2 Comments
It seems unimaginable that Norman McLaren might have once relinquished animation for still imagery. Perhaps more shocking still, the illustrious Scot had already begun his decades long career at the National Film Board of Canada when a new non-moving vocation…
Norman McLaren Centenary: McLaren and Movement
Seeing Music Move: Norman McLaren’s Direct Animation and Jazz
by Lilly Husbands • April 7, 2014 • 0 Comments
Direct animation possesses certain inherent qualities, such as immediacy, accelerated kinesis, and improvisational flow that I would like to suggest can correspond isomorphically to the extemporised uptempo meters of particular forms of jazz music. Gestalt theorist Rudolf Arnheim describes the…
Health Issues and Animation
From one extreme to the other?
by Nichola Dobson • March 31, 2014 • 0 Comments
In the last few months in the UK, the mainstream press, and in particular The Guardian newspaper, have been campaigning to raise awareness of the issues of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). Alongside Change.org, the movement has been keen to encourage…
Health Issues and Animation
Secret Architecture – the construction of ‘Loop’
by Samantha Moore • March 10, 2014 • 1 Comment
The project Silent Signal, initiated by Animate Projects, funded by a Wellcome trust arts award and working with animators and scientists, is working on a number of collaborative projects using animation to explore scientific enquiry. I have been working on…
Health Issues and Animation
Exploring an Autism Condition in “Mary and Max”
by Nigel Newbutt • March 3, 2014 • 2 Comments
“I do not feel disabled or defective” (Max, Mary and Max, 2009). Fig 1 & 1a: A clearly anxious Max as he experiences sensory overload. Autism is described as a “spectrum” disorder, ranging from “classic” autism, involving severe learning difficulties,…
New Theoretical Approaches
Animation Theory vs. Theories of Animation
by Bella Honess Roe • February 24, 2014 • 3 Comments
A couple of weeks ago, I responded to an excellent post by Caroline Ruddell in which she asks ‘what of animation theory?’ I suggested that animation studies hasn’t cohered around any central questions of enquiry in the way Film Studies…