Animation History

How can we describe movements in animated films? In Figure and Force in Animation Aesthetics, Ryan Pierson introduces a powerful new method for the study of animation. By looking for figures--arrangements that seem to intuitively hold together--and forces--underlying units of attraction, repulsion, and direction--Pierson reveals startling new possibilities for animation criticism, history, and theory. Drawing on concepts from Gestalt psychology, Pierson offers a wide-ranging comparative study of four animation techniques--soft-edged forms, walk cycles, camera movement, and rotoscoping--as they appear in commercial, artisanal, and avant-garde works. In the process, through close readings of little-analyzed films, Pierson demonstrates that figures and forces make fertile resources for theoretical speculation, unearthing affinities between animation practice and such topics as the philosophy of mathematics, scientific and political revolution, and love. Beginning and ending with the imperative to look closely, Figure and Force in Animation Aesthetics is a performance in seeing the world of motion anew.

L'expression "illusion de la vie" qui donne son titre à ce mémoire est empruntée à Frank Thomas et Ollie Johnston, auteurs de l'ouvrage The Illusion of life. Elle est fréquemment utilisée pour décrire le mode sur lequel les personnages d'animation opèrent. Les deux animateurs relatent dans ce livre leur expérience au sein des studios Disney et livrent l'idéologie au cœur de leurs productions. Cette dernière suppose qu'une animation doit restituer les mouvements d'un personnage de manière suffisamment crédible pour donner au spectateur le sentiment qu'il mène une existence autonome, et susciter en lui une forme d'émerveillement. Les personnages d'animation, selon cette mythologie, auraient une vie qui se poursuivrait en coulisses, commel'illustre pertinemment Who Framed Roger Rabbit ? (1988) dans lequel les personnages de cartoons cohabitent avec les humains et sont acteurs de leurs films.

Quant au qualificatif de virtuel, il ne fait pas exclusivement référence à sa nature numérique, il renvoie également au sens philosophique de ce terme. Le terme virtuel s'oppose à celui d'actuel, il s'agit d'une chose qui existe sans se manifester dans la réalité. Nous l'utilisons ici pour insister sur la condition à la fois immatérielle et fictionnelle du personnage numérique. Ce dernier-né de l'animation a connu un formidable essor, ce qui nous pousse à nous interroger sur les particularismes de son esthétique et de son champ d'action. En quoi l’outil numérique offre-t-il de nouvelles perspectives à la représentation de personnages animés?

Pour répondre à cette question, nous commencerons par nous familiariser avec les caractéristiques du personnage d'animation, sa nature et ses desseins, quelques soit la technique utilisée pour le matérialiser. Puis, nous concentrerons plus particulièrement notre attention sur l'image numérique, ses spécificités, et son retentissement sur le processus de création de personnages animés. Nous conduirons pour terminer le personnage à la rencontre du spectateur et réfléchirons à la manière dont leur interaction a pu faire émerger de nouvelles formes d'art.

This is a picture-based research which aims to explore the experiments of animated documentary, a unique form that can explore the mysteries and complexity of memories. Animated documentary is a medium through which one can reveal an individual’s memories within the context of a narrative that is historically situated and influenced. Through the analysis of several representative works, I hope to investigate how animated documentary can dance beyond the boundaries between animation and documentary.  The marriage of animation and documentary gave birth to a new form of film. How to category this new form? Actually, this naming issue may offer new point of views if we relate it to the thought in Michel Foucault’s The Order of Things. In fact, this raises issues questioning the nature of animation and documentary. We might find no solution in the process of pursuing the ontology of animation. However, we could consider the reflection of many artists who are jumping between ‘reality’ and ‘imaginary’ via animated documentary. Since the 1990s, many Chinese artists began experimenting with symbols (related to the Political Pop trend) in visual narration, which can also be seen as a reflection of structuralism and sociology in the contemporary Chinese field.

Key words: animated documentary, historical memory, autobiographical memory, reality, dialogue

Una linea de tiempo sobre nuestra historia de la animación.

Esta linea de tiempo comenzó como un trabajo de adscripción para el Seminario Anual de Animación de FBA-UNLP, luego se extendio y diseñó como una página web con conexiones entre producciones latinoamericanas de animación con la intención de servir como guía y acceso para estudiantes e investigadores en general.
El presente es una bajada a pdf de toda la información de la web, la cual puede visitarse aqui:
http://www.tiki-toki.com/timeline/entry/332817/Animacion-Latinoamericana/


Coordinación General, Diseño y Montaje: Dante Sorgentini (Argentina).

Redacción y recopilación:

Dante Sorgentini

Agradezco la colaboración de las siguientes personas, quienes forman parte del grupo de Facebook "Linea de tiempo de la animación Latinoamericana" y han aportado imágenes asi como información, material bibliográfico y videográfico.

Vázquez Hernández, Luis Gabriel (Mexico)

Patricia Menghi (Argentina)

Javier Ignacio Luna Crook (Argentina)

Carolina Sanchez (Colombia)

Sergio Armand (Argentina)

This paper explores representations of the historical intersection of race and gender in Disney’s The Princess and the Frog and black women in animated film in the USA. It examines how Disney and Pixar studio executives and animators attempted to use The Princess and the Frog to respond to its critics’ claims about the perpetuation of sexism and racism in its animated features. It has three major sections which explore how: (1) Disney attempted to answer criticism about the absence of African Americans and mothers in its films, the presence of physically over-sexualized and emotionally prince-dependent maidens in distress; (2) representations of animated black women in the history of film and Disney’s rewriting or sanitizing of African American history and denial of its and our nation’s racist past; and (3) Disney’s attempt to cash in on this denial of its racist past and its use of The Princess and the Frog as reconciliation.

In this paper the author aims to show the specific historic and stylistic connections that existed between 19th century caricature and early animated films. By doing so and by accepting caricature as the essence of animation, the author hopes to shed new light on some of the specificities of animation as an art form and especially its ability to create hyperreal figurines or even, supernatural figurines. That is, not only fantasy characters that look real, but “cartoony”
characters that have the ability to come out as more realistic than less distorted, thus truly more realistic, representations.

German film director Charlotte “Lotte” Reiniger (June 2, 1899 – June 19, 1981) is one of the most influential women directors because of her contributions to silhouette ani- mation as well as to silent film. One of Reiniger’s favourite activities in her childhood was to perform shadow plays for her family and friends. Back then she did not realize that this art would lead her to the theatre of Max Reinhardt, who collaborated with the famous German dramatist Paul Wegener.
From the time Reiniger was fifteen years old, she aspired to be an actress, as she admired theatre performances directed by Paul Wegener. The famous artist was intrigued by Reiniger’s silhouette paper cut-outs of the performers from the theatre of Max Reinhardt. The actors from Paul Wegener’s play received them as free gifts, and this led to the foundation of Wegener and Reiniger’s future cooperation; mainly she did set design and acted as an extra. In the fifty films Reiniger produced throughout her life, her paper-cut characters fulfilled her dream of being more than a supporting actress. By cutting paper into pieces and reconstructing them, Reiniger acted as a variety of characters, from a Prince (The Adventures of Prince Achmed/ Die Abenteur des Prinzen Achmed, 1926) to a Doctor (Dr. Dolittle and his Animals/ Dr. Dolittle und seine Tiere, 1928); from a magician boy (Ten Minutes of Mozart/ Zehn Minuten Mozart, 1930) to a bird hunter (Papageno, 1935). Even if these characters were male figures, they trans- mitted the reflection of a pioneer actress and artist.
Reiniger’s second silent feature film Dr. Dolittle and his Animals was not appreciated by the public, as it ignored the oncoming tide of sound film, but this animated work, inspired by Hugh Lofting’s novel of the same title, used gestures of animated characters to vividly speak with another kind of “sound”. While the first
several of Reiniger’s films were lost or damaged in World War II, The Adventures of Prince Achmed and Dr. Dolittle and his Animals were restored by the British Film Institute in accordance with Reiniger’s handbook from 1925. The pace and the running time differ from the originals though. Most of her work that we are discussing has actually lost much of the finer details, especially in the backgrounds. In the words of film historian William Moritz: let’s hope that a more authentic restoration becomes available soon1.
The Adventures of Prince Achmed is thought to be one of the oldest surviving feature-length animated films and is also considered to be the first avant-garde full- length animated feature. In fact, the first feature-length animated film was created by Argentinean artist Quirino Cristiani, but unfortunately, his works are lost. A similar debate is conducted in regard to the question of the first animated documentary, con- sidering The Sinking of the Lusitania (dir. Winsor McCay, 1918, USA) which was a work of anti-war propaganda2. The Adventures of Prince Achmed paved the way for usage of a multiplane camera, ten years earlier than its use in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937, dir. David Hand, USA), produced by Walt Disney. The entire film is animated in the silhouette technique which employs movable cardboard and metal cut-outs posed in front of illuminated sheets of glass. This special form glorifies the romantic fantasy of Prince Achmed who sets off on an adventure with a magical flying horse, and falls in love with Princess Peri Banu, becoming a new sparkling “star” in the mysterious sky of “The Arabian Nights”.

Abstract: This article examines the neglect of animation in film criticism and theory, focusing on the 1960s and 1970s. Contrary to the popular belief that that animation was neglected because of an excessive focus on realism, this article argues that it was instead the rise of modernism that was primarily responsible. Unlike the prewar modernists who had celebrated animation, the postwar avant-garde sought to distance itself from it. This was thanks to two changes after World War II: a new animation culture concerned with visual education and social messages, and high modernism’s disenchantment with collectivist politics. Avant-garde critic Annette Michelson is used as a site to unearth this conflict of sensibilities.

Animasyon yapmaya niyet edip niyet eyledikten sonra cumhuriyet dönemi animasyon tarihinin kilometre taşlarını araştırmak istedim ve beklediğimden derin bir geçmişle karşılaştım. Bir Japonya, ABD, Fransa, İtalya kadar olmasa da bu işe niyetli arkadaşlara ilham verecektir.

Animasyon (canlandırma) tarihini “Hacivat ile Karagöz”den almak anlamlı olacaktır. Canlandırma için mutlaka bilgisayar televizyon veya sinema gerekmiyor. Eskiden deve derisinden yapılmış bir perde de bu ihtiyacı rahatlıkla görüyordu.

This article introduces and critically engages with the animated films produced in the geopolitical reality of South Korea from the colonial period under Japanese occupation to the present, and the animation-related phenomena they caused. In the past, studies of South Korean animation have tended to describe it merely in terms of a production factory on the international scene of animation. However, the history of South Korean animation, many parts of which have been forgotten or not recorded, is as extensive as that of South Korea itself. In exploring the historical and political contexts of South Korean animation in chronological order, the aim is not to present a grand narrative of national cinema. Rather, the article hopes to shed some light on the complex web of animation production, aesthetic expression and South Korean ideologies and political situations.

Pictures that move and give an illusion of depth have long fascinated viewers. "3D and Animated Lenticular Photography: Between Utopia and Entertainment" recounts a multifaceted history of images that animate with a flick of the wrist or appear vividly three-dimensional without the use of special devices. Both effects are made possible by one of photography’s most original technologies: the lenticular process.
Timby weaves lenticular imagery into scientific and popular culture, from early cinema and color reproduction, to the birth of modern advertising and the market for studio portraits, postcards, and religious imagery. The motivations behind the invention and reinvention of this technology, from the turn of the twentieth century through the end of the pre-digital era, shed new light on our relationship to photographic realism and on the forceful interplay in photography between technological innovation and the desire to be entertained.

[In this file: Contents, Introduction, Index]

The cartoon film adaptation of George Orwell's Animal Farm (1945) was produced by Halas and Batchelor Cartoon Films in 1954 and released in the United States later the same year and in the UK in early 1955. While both the British and the American governments had used the 'cartoon' during the First and Second World Wars to influence public opinion, the film remains an unusual example of an animated Cold War propaganda film. Made under controversial circumstances, the film exploited the public's association of the animated cartoon with childhood 'innocence' along with the cartoon's highly flexible visual language to express explicitly political ideas and attitudes. This article will examine John Halas and Joy Batchelor's partnership, identifying the husband-wife team's concern to combine animation with persuasion and how this lead to their involvement in the production of Animal Farm.

A continuation of 1994’s groundbreaking Cartoons, Giannalberto Bendazzi’s Animation: A World History is the largest, deepest, most comprehensive text of its kind, based on the idea that animation is an art form that deserves its own place in scholarship. Bendazzi delves beyond just Disney, offering readers glimpses into the animation of Russia, Africa, Latin America, and other often-neglected areas and introducing over fifty previously undiscovered artists. Full of first-hand, never before investigated, and elsewhere unavailable information, Animation: A World History encompasses the history of animation production on every continent over the span of three centuries. Volume III catches you up to speed on the state of animation from 1991 to present. Although characterized by such trends as economic globalization, the expansion of television series, emerging markets in countries like China and India, and the consolidation of elitist auteur animation, the story of contemporary animation is still open to interpretation. With an abundance of first-hand research and topics ranging from Nickelodeon and Pixar to modern Estonian animation, this book is the most complete record of modern animation on the market and is essential reading for all serious students of animation history.

Esta é uma monografia de finalização de Curso de Especialização em Cinema pela
Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte e pretende situar historicamente a produção
audiovisual no Estado do Rio Grande do Norte, no gênero desenhos animados, a partir de
pesquisa bibliográfica, principalmente, mas também entrevistas com produtores de animação
do estado. Num primeiro momento, será inserida a fundamentação teórica quanto a termos
históricos, tanto internacionalmente quanto nacionalmente; o uso dos elementos estéticos e
técnicos para se criar um desenho animado; a produção de animação em estados do Nordeste
e finalmente chegarei a produção dos desenhos animados no Rio Grande do Norte, os
primeiros trabalhos, sua evolução histórica, a atualidade e o que se almeja para o futuro. Além
da linguagem da animação em si, parte do texto falará também em outra arte, dita irmã da
animação, a história quadrinho, influência dos artistas que a utilizam e seus direcionamentos
para esta arte que se desenvolve a cada dia.

This article offers an industrial history of yaoi anime’s distribution in the United States by companies that acquired official distribution licenses. During the course of this history, the term “yaoi” was not always dominant in American anime vernacular; rather, it only ascended to widespread American usage after it was adopted by American distributors as an industry term. Yaoi anime’s complex distribution history reveals that, unlike yaoi manga, yaoi anime began and continues to be industrially situated at the overlap of seemingly disparate niche categories.

Tesis de licenciatura de la Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia - Unidad Chihuahua. Aborda el estudio descriptivo de los jóvenes admiradores del anime, manga y la cultura pop japonesa en la ciudad de Chihuahua, México. Describe y analiza los procesos de globalización cultural generados desde Oriente y la creación de sentido a través del juego del disfraz (cosplay) y el idiolecto otaku.

/ This bachelor thesis adresses the study of Otaku culture in Chihuahua, north of Mexico. Here, processes of cultural globalization generated form Japan are described and analyzed, as well as sense-making through the game of costume-play (cosplay).

Animação, Vinhetas e Publicidade na TV Brasileira ____________________________________________________________________________ 3 FOLHA DE APROVAÇÃO TÍTULO: ANIMAÇÃO, VINHETAS E PUBLICIDADE NA TV BRASILEIRA AUTOR: BRUNO MOREIRA LIMA Monografia submetida ao corpo docente da Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, como parte dos requisitos necessários à obtenção do grau de Bacharel em Comunicação Social. Aprovada por: Prof. _______________________ Orientador Prof. _______________________ Prof. _______________________ RIO DE JANEIRO 2002 Animação, Vinhetas e Publicidade na TV Brasileira ____________________________________________________________________________ 4 RESUMO LIMA, BRUNO MOREIRA. ANIMAÇÃO, VINHETAS E PUBLICIDADE NA TV BRASILEIRA. ORIENTADOR: LUIZ SOLON GALLOTTI. RIO DE JANEIRO: UFRJ / ECO, 2002. MONOGRAFIA A presente monografia tem como tema prioritário a animação. Visa analisar as relações das principais vertentes dessa forma peculiar de arte com a sua aplicação mais freqüente no Brasil, a propaganda televisiva. Apesar de referências a exemplos de outros países, principalmente da América do Norte, o foco do estudo é dado às situações brasileiras. A propaganda televisiva aqui analisada, não se restringe àquela de divulgação de bens de consumo, mas abarca também a promoção das próprias emissoras, que se dá através das vinhetas institucionais e de programação. O trabalho divide-se em duas partes. A primeira busca definir o que é animação. Cuida de uma revisão histórica dessa forma de arte, bem como de suas técnicas e usos. Na segunda, são analisadas as relações entre a animação, os filmes publicitários e as vinhetas televisivas. Animação, Vinhetas e Publicidade na TV Brasileira ____________________________________________________________________________ 5 ABSTRACT LIMA, BRUNO MOREIRA. ANIMAÇÃO, VINHETAS E PUBLICIDADE NA TV BRASILEIRA. ORIENTADOR: LUIZ SOLON GALLOTTI. RIO DE JANEIRO: UFRJ / ECO, 2002.

Analysis of how the editing choices in the animation feature film "Perfect Blue" are accurately studied and performed to reflect the psychological crisis the protagonist faces.

Published on "First Frame" (Spring 2021), BFE (British Film Editors) official magazine.
Edited by: Alan Miller (https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000083/)

The article examines a particular instance of animation practice through a reading of how Bob Sabiston’s Rotoshop software was used in the 2006 film A Scanner Darkly. By discussing the notions of ‘communities of practice’ and ‘legitimate peripheral participation’, and contextualizing the film in relation to different modes of working, the author excavates the ways in which a range of people came
to work on the project. Moreover, he outlines some of the production history of the film to argue that certain assumptions and expectations about accepted working practice point to wider perceptions of ‘independent’ and ‘studio’ animation. Questions of division of labour and standardization, and how they relate to creativity, autonomy and animation production will be addressed; Rotoshop’s position in the history of animation forms an interesting case study for interrogating these issues.

"Visualizing Art History: Experimental Animation and Its Mentor, Jules Engel" by Janeann Dill, phd, mfa

A dictionary begins when it no longer gives the meaning of words, but their tasks.
--- Georges Bataille

It is most often the case when I refer to my work as experimental animation that I am met with the question, what is experimental animation? I am instantly reminded of a story about Louis Armstrong in conversation with Johnny Carson who asked Armstrong, “What is jazz?” Louis Armstrong enthusiastically responded, “Well if you don’t know what it is, I sure as hell can’t tell you!”

In some ways, Louis Armstrong’s response might be said to be universal for questions having to do with art, in that any attempt to offer definition tends to further confuse, bind, constrict and/or be irrelevant, rather than to clarify meaning. As a scholar and as an artist, I am most interested in the unanswerable. As I understand it, to ask the unanswerable is the beginning of an event … if you will, an event of language, timing and gesture, experimentation and conceptualizing. The more important consideration in a “what is ____?” question is not the answer, but the asking.. How is it we know so little about the art form?

La representación de la amistad en el cine de animación. Tratamiento y desarrollo en Bambi (1942) y Toy Story (1995) La manifestación de la amistad en dos obras de cine de animación, presentes en diferentes épocas históricas, mediante la representación adaptada a cada período.

This article examines philosopher Stanley Cavell's notorious claim that "cartoons are not movies" in the context of the fall of the studio cartoon and the rise of "animation" more generally. While scholars often take Cavell to be dismissing cartoons altogether, this article argues that Cavell is in fact arguing, in line with his own modernist aesthetics, that cartoons cannot be judged on the same terms as films. Moreover, his theorization of cartoons as "animated world projections" fit quite neatly into an orthodox conception of traditional animation theory, like theories by Sergei Eisenstein and Erwin Panofsky. Cavell's theory, however, had come at a time when the studio cartoon had fallen out of favor. In its place arose new conceptions of animation as a collection of what the author calls "animated technique projections," exemplified in films like Yellow Submarine.

Pursuing Animal History as Body History, this paper focuses neither on animals nor on humans, but rather on bodies and the different societal demands made on them. It rejects the simple attribution of a history and an actor- or even subject-status to humans and animals per se. Instead, the paper suggests a historical problematization of the processes that produce humans or animals as having a history and as being actors or even subjects. Against this background, I try to demonstrate the usefulness of distinguishing between a praxeological approach in a broad sense on the one hand and a genealogical perspective in a narrow sense on the other. I thus understand Animal History less as an expanded form of Cultural History, but much more as a special form of Social History, placing at the center of interest neither the nature/culture dichotomy nor the concept of life, but rather the concept of the social.

"Planet Zemlja je igrom slučaja postao posljednji autorov završeni film, a trebala ga je naslijediti dugometražna češko-hrvatska igrana koprodukcija Kristalni otmičari ili pukotina u izgubljenom vremenu. Nažalost, Vukotić je preminuo 1998. godine, pa su iza Otmičara ostale samo skice i planovi."

Satoshi Kon is a Japanese animation film director whose works, story, and imagery suggest altered mental states, such as insanity or dreaming. Millennium Actress (2001), which this author regards as Kon’s magnum opus, uses a dream-like style of animation and filmmaking
to create the narrative of a biography of a fictional actress. In this feature-length animated film, Kon reifies theories and findings from the functions of dreaming and the mechanics of dream that have developed over a hundred years since the early 20th century. The oneiric quality of the animation film is explored using both psychoanalytical/psychological theories and neuroscientific frameworks to reveal its story of a feminine journey in relation to the collective unconscious and mythic story structure, and the cinematic editing techniques that help the storytelling lead to the dream state.

Introdução O estudo sobre a visualidade pós-moderna no cinema de animação requer uma aproximação com elementos pertences à relação entre moderno e pós-moderno. Não há uma concordância dos historiadores de arte quanto ao início e ao fim da modernidade (se é que este fim ocorreu). Alguns vinculam o modernismo ao surgimento da Pop Art na década de 1960, e outros entendem a sua origem a partir da década de 1980. A relação entre moderno e pós-moderno costuma ser problemática e segue ainda não bem compreendida por muitos (AUMONT, 2008). Um caminho para o entendimento inicia na constatação de algumas diferenciações. Teixeira Coelho (2001) explica que modernismo é um estilo, um fato, enquanto a modernidade é a reflexão sobre o fato, a consciência que uma época tem de si mesma. Já o pós-moderno não se trata de uma superação ou negação do moderno, muito menos de um estilo, uma vez que "questiona e agrega em si os mais variados estilos imagísticos, compondose, assim, dos muitos fractais, da hibridação de técnicas gráfico/plásticas." (RAHDE, 2001, p.28). O pós-moderno caracteriza-se, então, como uma condição histórica existente pelas práticas estéticas e culturais (HARVEY, 1996), evidenciando uma visualidade híbrida e complexa na relação com a racionalidade da modernidade (AUMONT, 2008).

Until the 1990s, animation occupied a relatively marginal presence in Hollywood. Today, it is at the very heart of both the film industry and contemporary popular culture. Charting the major changes and continuities in Hollywood animation over the past thirty years, this groundbreaking book offers an authoritative history of Hollywood animation since the 1990s. Analysing dozens of key films, including The Lion King, Toy Story, Shrek, Despicable Me, Frozen and Moana, it examines the emergence of new genres and stylistic approaches, as well as the ongoing blurring of boundaries between animation and live-action. Identifying narrative and thematic patterns, and developments in industry and style, the book explores how animation in the United States both responds to and recapitulates the values, beliefs, hopes and fears of the nation.