Animation

Animation has the capacity to re-invigorate how we think about cinematic space. Cinematic space is able to represent and be expressive, and its place in generating narrative meaning is taken to be central to cinema. This, however, overlooks another aspect of space, one associated with intensive spatial experience and other kinds of transformation. As it is rare for live-action images to show space in the process of change, this aspect is not often addressed in the cinema. By contrast, in many animations, space is caught in the act of changing, making it especially relevant to thinking about experiences of spatial transformation. The emphasis in this article is on exploring animation as a revitalization of cinematic space. By paying close attention to both the form and content of Duck Amuck (Chuck Jones, 1953), The Street (Caroline Leaf, 1976), The Metamorphosis of Mr Samsa (Caroline Leafs, 1977), Flatworld (Daniel Greaves, 1997) and Nocturna Artificialia (Brothers Quay, 1979) the author shows how animation re-animates space. To generate this position she formulates a view of space as undergoing processes of reverberation: existing beyond the location of events, fluid and marked by heterogeneity, shifting between familiarity and uncertainty, and finally, as chaotic and potentially unknowable.

Following Tom Gunning’s assertion that each change in film history implies a change in its address to the spectator, this article closely analyses The Polar Express (Robert Zemeckis, 2004) in order to interrogate what kinds of changes are at stake for the contemporary spectator of the wholly computer-generated blockbuster. The article also considers the extent to which the immersive, video game-like visual aesthetic and mode of address present in The Polar Express strive to naturalize viewer relations with digital spaces and characters such as those inherent to both computer-generated films and the ‘invisible’ virtual realm of cyberspace. Finally, the article argues that The Polar Express functions as a compelling historical document of an era when cinema and video games have never been more intertwined in terms of aesthetics, character construction, and narrative, and raises compelling questions about whether video games have begun to exert the type of formative influence upon cinema that cinema previously exerted on video games.

This article examines and compares a couple of moments of fleeting strangeness punctuating the history of the cultural reception of moving image technologies. Maxim Gorky read the early cinematographic image in terms of ‘cursed grey shadows’ (1896), while recent reviewers of Hironobu Sakaguchi’s Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001) have rendered the film’s computer-generated cast as cadavers, dummies, dolls and silicon-skinned mannequins. This article argues that it is not merely the image’s unfamiliar and new aesthetics that evoke the uncanny. Rather the image is received within a cultural framework where its perceived strangeness speaks allegorically of what it means to be ‘human’ at that historical moment.

This article contrasts the different economies of motion found in cinema and animation, and explores the particular economy of movement and libidinal investment that accompanies Japanese anime, paying close attention to the first anime TV series, Astroboy (Tetsuwan Atomu). Metz and Lyotard argue that cinema generates an impression of reality through its particular economy of motion. Cel animation, in contrast, relies on a different economy of motion. This is especially the case in the specific kind of limited animation found in Japanese anime. This article focuses on the specificities of this kind of animated movement (particularly its emphasis on stillness), and the way Astroboy relied on commodity serialization to generate a particularly immersive image environment - one that set the stage for what is now known as ‘anime’.

This article considers Andrew Niccol’s comedic cyberpunk film S1MØNE, a story about the development of computer-generated animated actors. When a has-been Hollywood director secretly uploads a digital actress to save his career, passing her off as real, fans fall for the trick and delight in the newest ‘It girl’. Soon the synthespian’s celebrity eclipses the director’s fame, yet he finds it impossibly difficult to delete the program and get the genie back into the bottle. Niccol’s film is part cinematic fable and part philosophical inquiry into how the use of virtual actors (‘vactors’) in Hollywood cinema will affect filmmakers, actors and audiences.

The article examines theory-practice relationships in the field of Animation Studies via three conceptual frameworks: legitimate peripheral participation, critical practice and recontextualization. The overarching argument is that Animation Studies must be understood in an ‘interdisciplinary’ way, and that means evaluating how different communities of practice work with similar or related terms. The article draws upon email discussion group data as a way of beginning to map the discourses used by people working within the field of Animation Studies. The perceived role of technology is given specific attention, particularly the ways it can be seen to be straitjacketing the development of a truly critical Animation Studies community - one that attends to theory and practice in equal measure.