In “The Transforming Image: the Roots of Animation in Metamorphosis and Motion”, Tom Gunning analyzes two optical devices, the “blow book” and the flipbook, to investigate the “eternally protean nature of the moving image” and the relationship between animation and…
Acting and Performance
Animation and Performance
by Lynn Tomlinson • September 30, 2013 • 6 Comments
In preparing my presentation for June’s SAS meeting at USC, on three women who dance or perform along their animated projections, I came across an intriguing article by Teri Silvio, in the Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, entitled “Animation: The New…
Acting and Performance
The Voice
by David Perlmutter • September 23, 2013 • 1 Comment
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…