A Reader in Animation Studies

Jayne Pilling

• Publisher: John Libbey Publishing
• Year: 1998
• Print ISBN: 9781864620009
• eBook ISBN: 9780861969005
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Film & Video

Cartoons—both from the classic Hollywood era and from more contemporary feature films and television series—offer a rich field for detailed investigation and analysis. Contributors draw on theories and methodology from film, television, and media studies, art history and criticism, and feminism and gender studies.

Notes

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Introduction

Notes

1. Wallace and Gromit are the protagonists of the extremely popular plasticene animation films directed by Nick Park, of Aardman Animation Studios: A Grand Day Out, The Wrong Trousers, and A Close Shave which have gained three Academy Award nominations, with the two latter films winning the Award.

2. Svankmajer’s short films are too numerous to mention here: the most well-known being Dimensions of Dialogue, which has won numerous awards at film festivals. They have enjoyed successful theatrical distribution in the United Kingdom, Germany and Austria, and to a more limited extent, the United States. More successful in terms of theatrical box-office, no doubt because they were feature films and hence more marketable, were Alice and Faust. See Michael O’Pray’s and Paul Wells’s essays in this volume for a more detailed discussion of Svankmajer.

3. The Brothers Quay, working in model animation, have an extensive filmography, and are perhaps best known for their award-winning The Street of Crocodiles. Again, their short films have had some success, in terms of theatrical distribution, in Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States. For a discussion of their work, see the essay in this volume by Steve Weiner.

4. The influence of pioneer model animator Ladislas Starewicz, whose most remarkable films were made between 1910 and the mid 1930s, can be clearly seen in The Nightmare Before Christmas. While the latter film was conceived by Tim Burton, who did many of the original sketches for the film, it’s actual director Henry Selick has also talked in interviews of the influence of East European and experimental animation on his work. Michael Frierson has also written on other animation influences on Tim Burton in Animation World Network Magazine.

5. It is interesting to note that these three United Kingdom television animation series were originally inspired by short films made by the respective filmmakers: Sarah Kennedy, Candy Guard, and Alison Snowden and David Fine.

6. The lucrative budgets allocated to the production of commercials have provided a living for many independent animators, which allows them to continue making their own films, as well as offering a form of subsidised research and development.

7. For a selective bibliography, see footnotes and references to Robin Allan’s and other essays in this volume.

8. See especially J. Beck and W. Friedwald, The Warner Brothers Cartoons (New Jersey & London: Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1981), reprinted in a revised edition as Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies: A Complete Illustrated Guide to the Warner Bros Cartoons (Henry Holt (1989) and L. Maltin, Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons (New York: Plume, 1980)).

9. Such films were screened in England by the Film Society, a cultural force that brought the notion of film as art to the British intelligentsia.

10. See Mark Langer’s essay in this volume.

11. Some examples: T. Sennett, The Art of Hanna-Barbera (New York, Viking Studio Books, 1989); ibid., The Fleischer Story (New York: Da Capo Press, 1988); R. Noake, Animation: A Guide to Animated Film Techniques (London & Sydney: Macdonald Orbis, 1988) (unusually for a book on technique, the author cunningly introduces notions of critical reading of individual films via the techniques discussed); J. Lenburg, The Great Cartoon Directors (Jefferson & London: Macfarland, 1983); Adamson, J. Tex Avery, King of the Cartoons, New York, Da Capo Press, 1975; A. Bastiancich (ed.), Lotte Reiniger (Turin: Assemblea Teatro/Compagnia del Bagatto, 1982); J. Pilling, (ed.), Ladislas Starewiecz (Edinburgh: Edinburgh International Film Festival, 1984). J. Beck (ed.), The 50 Greatest Cartoons (Atlanta: Turner Publishing, 1994); P. Brion, Tex Avery: Les Dessins (Paris: Editions Nathan Image, 1988).

12. R. Russett and C. Starr, Experimental Animation (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1976). Reprinted, in an expanded edition, subtitled Origins of a New Art (New York: Da Capo, 1988).

13. For example, in the United Kingdom, some issues of British journals Screen, Undercut and Afterimage.

14. For example: D. Curtis, Robert Breer (Cambridge, Cambridge Animation Festival, 1983); D. Curtis, Len Lye (Bristol Animation Festival, 1987).

15. For a pertinent discussion of critical/theoretical approaches to animation, see also M. O’Pray, ‘The Animation Film’, Oxford Guide to Film Studies, J.H.P.C. Gibson (ed.) (Oxford: OUP, 1997).

16. Ibid.

17. Although there a number of ‘art galleries’ that sell ‘limited editions’ of ‘collectible’ cel animation artwork, and this has become a quite lucrative business, this phenomenon is far removed from the role of traditional art galleries in promoting the work of individual artists. On the merchandising of ‘artwork’ relating to classic Hollywood cartoons, see M. Langer’s essay in this volume.

18. D. Bordwell, in N. Carroll (ed.), Post-Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1996).

19. A. Cholodenko (ed.), The Illusion of Life (Sydney: Power/Australian Film Commission, 1991).

20. D. Bordwell, in N. Carroll, op. cit.

21. See essays by Manovich and Denslow in this volume.

22. N.M. Klein, Seven Minutes: The Life and Death of the American Cartoon (London: Verso, 1993).

23. L. Raffaelli, Le anime disegnate (Rome: Castelvecchi, 1994). Now also available in French translation Les Ames Dessinés (Paris: Dreamland, 1996).

24. P. Brophy (ed.), KABOOM! Explosive Animation from America and Japan (Sydney, Museum of Contemporary Art, 1994).

25. G. Bendazzi, Cartoons: One Hundred Years of Cinema Animation (London: John Libbey, 1994).

26. Ibid., from the introduction.

27. P. Hames (ed.), Dark Alchemy: The Films of Jan Svankmajer (Trowbridge: Flicks Books, 1995).

28. Similarly, the Bergamo Film Festival, which, like most festivals, is live action feature-film oriented, and is particularly known for its retrospectives, decided to organise a homage to Svankmajer after discovering his most recent feature, The Conspirators of Pleasure (1996) and produced a publication to accompany the retrospective that covered all his films. See Jan Svankmajer, B. Fornara, F. Pitassio and A. Signorelli (eds) (Bergamo: Bergamo Film Meeting 1997).

29. D. Crafton, Before Mickey: The Animated Film 1898–1928 (Cambridge–London: MIT, 1982). D. Crafton, Emile Cohl, Caricature and Film (New Jersey: Princeton, 1990).

30. For example, G. Bendazzi and G.B.G. Michelone (ed.), Il Movimento Creato: Studi e documenti di ventisei saggisti sul cinema d’animazione (Torino: Pluriverso, 1993). See the following footnotes for other references.

31. G. Bendazzi and G. Michelone (ed.), Coloriture: Voci, rumore, musiche nel cinema d’animazione (Bologna: Pendragon, 1995).

32. M. Chion, La Voix au Cinéma (Paris: Editions de l’Etoile, 1982); M. Chion, Le son au cinéma (Paris: Cahiers du Cinéma, 1985); M. Chion, La Toile Trouée: la parole au cinéma (Paris: Editions de l’Etoile, 1988); M. Chion, Audi-Vision: Sound on Screen (New York & Chichester, West Sussex: Columbia University Press, 1994).

33. J. Marcel, Le Langage des Lignes et autres essais sur le cinéma d’animation (Québec: Cinéma Les 400 coups, 1995). See also his study on French-Canadian animation filmmaker Pierre Hébert, some of whose own reflections on animation are included, in J. Marcel, Pierre Hébert, l’homme animé (Québec: Cinéma Les 400 coups, 1996).

34. H. Joubert-Laurencin, La Lettre Volante: quatre essais sur le cinéma d’ani...

Table of contents

• A Reader in Animation Studies
• A Reader in Animation Studies
• Contents
• The Society for Animation Studies: A brief history
• Introduction
• What is animation and who needs to know?
• ‘Reality’ effects in computer animation
• Second-order realism and post-modernist aesthetics in computer animation
• The Quay brothers’ The Epic of Gilgamesh and the ‘metaphysics of obscenity’
• Narrative strategies for resistance and protest in Eastern European animation
• Putting themselves in the pictures
• An analysis of Susan Pitt’s Asparagus and Joanna Priestley’s All My Relations
• Clay animation comes out of the inkwell
• Bartosch’s The Idea
• Norman McLaren and Jules Engel: Post-modernists
• Disney, Warner Bros. and Japanese animation
• The thief of Buena Vista
• Animatophilia, cultural production and corporate interests
• Francis Bacon and Walt Disney revisited
• Body consciousness in the films of Jan Svankmajer
• Eisenstein and Stokes on Disney
• Towards a post-modern animated discourse
• Restoring the aesthetics of early abstract films
• Resistance and subversion in animated films of the Nazi era
• European influences on early Disney feature films
• Norm Ferguson and the Latin American films of Walt Disney
• Notes on the contributors
• List of SAS Conference papers
• Notes