{"title":"From ‘Trucfilm’ to ‘Animatiefilm’: How the Emergence of Animation as a New Artistic Form Is Reflected in Dutch Terminology","authors":"M. Peters","doi":"10.1177/17468477221085411","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17468477221085411","url":null,"abstract":"Before 1940, the influence of foreign films, filmmakers and film networks on film culture in the Netherlands was substantial. This article investigates how various Dutch professionals within the fields of film production, distribution, exhibition and reception referred to animation film, in a period when this term was not part of the Dutch language. From early on, animation film was recognized as being ‘intrinsically different’ from live-action film and, along with the gradual emergence of this new artistic form, a corresponding language to support it evolved, influenced by language contacts in various contexts in the multilingual landscape in Europe. From the first singular appearances in 1913, a more form-specific terminology had gradually developed by 1940. During the same time, animation film steadily proceeded to occupy its permanent place in Dutch film culture.","PeriodicalId":43271,"journal":{"name":"Animation-An Interdisciplinary Journal","volume":"17 1","pages":"49 - 69"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46119427","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Discovering Animation Manuals: Their Place and Role in the History of Animation","authors":"Coralie Lamotte","doi":"10.1177/17468477221080112","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17468477221080112","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores the history of animation manuals in the United States from the 1940s to the present. It argues that this history can be divided into three major periods that correspond to changes in technique, profession and industry. From the post-War period until the 1980s, manuals reflected the hegemony of hand-drawn animation, closely bound to studio production and an apprenticeship training system. At the end of the 1970s, the rise of computer animation led to a new type of guidebook, addressing a growing convergence of computational training and new requirements introduced by the animation industry. Finally, since the turn of the century, manuals have sought to combine hand-drawn skills with digital tools, re-negotiating tradition and novelty in a diversified professional environment. Therefore, manuals are situated at a changing nexus of professional identity and training, techniques and technology, aesthetics and modes of production. In this article, the author argues that their integration within the history of animation will prove beneficial to researchers. Nevertheless, manuals are not innocent sources, but reflect discursive positions that shape the very history in which they take part.","PeriodicalId":43271,"journal":{"name":"Animation-An Interdisciplinary Journal","volume":"17 1","pages":"127 - 143"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47747977","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Introduction to the Special Issue: New Perspectives on Animation Historiography","authors":"Rada Bieberstein, Erwin Feyersinger","doi":"10.1177/17468477221085619","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17468477221085619","url":null,"abstract":"Animation is strongly metamorphic. Not only in the sense of the omnipresent audiovisual and narrative changes we encounter in animated images, but it is animation itself that constantly transforms, shifts and expands (Wells and Hardstaff, 2008: 16). Therefore, our artistic and theoretical conceptions of animation constantly morph as well. These paradigmatic changes are further fuelled by the rapid emergence of new media technologies and their cultural implications (see, for example, Leslie and McKim, 2017). To account for this metamorphic nature of the field, it is helpful to conceive animation not as one single phenomenon but rather as a multitude of phenomena that are connected, in Ludwig Wittgenstein’s sense, by Familienähnlichkeit (which is usually translated as family resemblance), i.e. by overlapping features that are not necessarily shared by all phenomena (Wittgenstein, 1999: 31–32). In relation to historiography, a recognition of animation’s heterogeneity offers a fresh look at what we call animation history and paves the way for writing the histories of new and overlooked forms, contexts and uses of animation both according to their own unique features and in relation to other forms, contexts and uses. For writing the histories of animation, an ever-expanding and changing understanding of the field poses many challenges and offers as many opportunities as this Special Issue aims at exploring. The Special Issue is framed by our own contribution, which discusses various historiographical approaches to account for a continuously transforming understanding of animation. We survey discourses on historiography in animation studies, trace the impact of new film history and media archaeology on rethinking animation historiography, and point out a few lessons we can learn from ongoing debates in art history and media art history. Conceiving historiography as an interdisciplinary endeavour, we look at how history is written in performance studies and the history of science, two exemplary fields of visual culture where animation plays an important role but is usually only mentioned in passing. Finally, we show what can be gained from studying the histories of what has been perceived as marginal forms of animation, exemplified by motion graphics and animation in","PeriodicalId":43271,"journal":{"name":"Animation-An Interdisciplinary Journal","volume":"17 1","pages":"5 - 9"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43759684","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Ever-Expanding Scope of Animation Historiography: A Discussion of Interdisciplinary Approaches and Methods","authors":"Rada Bieberstein, Erwin Feyersinger","doi":"10.1177/17468477221080108","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17468477221080108","url":null,"abstract":"Accounting for animation’s pervasiveness, heterogeneity and intermediality, this article reflects conceptions of animation historiography. It brings together contemporary perspectives and methods in the research of animation history/historiography, and considers tangible approaches outside animation studies. Particular attention is paid to materials and aspects that are overlooked and non-canonical. The authors conceptualize animation historiography in the shape of a rhizome, enabling a better understanding of the relations between canonical aspects and fringes, and enriching the dialogue between the various disciplines, actors and institutions writing the histories of animation. Following a look at the current state of debate about animation history/histories and historiography in animation studies, the article surveys pertinent debates in film studies, art history and media art history. It then discusses historical research in performance studies and in the history of science, both concerned with fields where animation is often marginalized, as well as animation-related research on motion graphics and useful cinema, themselves under-researched topics, for perspectives to reconceptualize animation history. Media archaeology, its approaches and methodology, will be addressed repeatedly from the perspectives of the different disciplines and areas. The article is conceived as an ‘open paper’, understood as an invitation to further discuss animation historiography on a metalevel.","PeriodicalId":43271,"journal":{"name":"Animation-An Interdisciplinary Journal","volume":"17 1","pages":"10 - 25"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43471223","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"‘One Out of Harmony with Her Own Time’: Lotte Reiniger, Anachronism and Doing Animation History through Film Society Reconstruction","authors":"Tashi Petter","doi":"10.1177/17468477221087164","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17468477221087164","url":null,"abstract":"This article reflects on the complexities of doing animation history in relation to Lotte Reiniger, perhaps the most famous and prolific woman in animation but a figure who has been mythologized, marginalized and excluded from traditional film historical accounts. Beginning with a survey of existing scholarship, this article introduces the possibility of reading Reiniger as an ‘anachronist’ – one out of harmony with her own time – by drawing on the emerging field of media archaeology. The idea of Reiniger ‘out of time’ prompted a series of film society reconstructions, re-imagined from surviving archival materials (programmes, newspaper cuttings, letters) and presented to contemporary audiences on 16 mm and 35 mm prints. This article will reflect on the research, development and delivery of the re-enactments, bringing these experiments into dialogue with writings on media archaeology, reconstruction and performance theory. Film reconstructions are presented as a form of feminist media archaeology, which can offer an alternative to traditional chronological history.","PeriodicalId":43271,"journal":{"name":"Animation-An Interdisciplinary Journal","volume":"17 1","pages":"70 - 87"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48977204","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Modernism and Discourses on Animation in 1930s Portugal: The Case of José de Almada Negreiros","authors":"M. Soares","doi":"10.1177/17468477221085511","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17468477221085511","url":null,"abstract":"The leading Portuguese modernist José de Almada Negreiros (1893–1970) often interacted with cinema and was particularly captivated by animation. While Almada’s stay in Madrid – from 1927 to 1932 – was marked by a magic lantern show and echoes of cut-out animation in his visual works, his presentation on Disney at the premiere of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in Lisbon is a milestone of the reception of animation in Portugal. Drawing upon current art historiographical debates, this article addresses the case of Almada as a way to reconstruct the history of the reception of animation in peripheral countries. Simultaneously, it highlights the importance of interdisciplinarity, the intertwinement between history and theory, as well as the support of archival research.","PeriodicalId":43271,"journal":{"name":"Animation-An Interdisciplinary Journal","volume":"17 1","pages":"88 - 109"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49090049","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Contemporizing the National Style in Chinese Animation: The Case of Nezha (2019)","authors":"T. W. Whyke, Joaquin Lopez Mugica, M. Brown","doi":"10.1177/17468477211049354","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17468477211049354","url":null,"abstract":"In this article, the authors explore the popular animation Nezha (2019), examining the idea that it typifies the ‘national style’. Expanding the work of other scholars who have demonstrated the changeability of the ‘national style’, here they examine this notion in regard to the way in which Nezha (2019) represents ‘Chineseness’ at this particular socio-political moment. Methodologically, they focus their analysis largely upon the film’s narrative and aesthetics, drawing on a number of reviews as counterpoints for the way in which it was interpreted to situate it in popular discourses. The authors argue that Nezha (2019) presents a national image in which traditions and modernity are interwoven, and the focus upon the ‘technological’ – its digitality – constitutes a refiguring of animation in China as symbolic of modernity. Narratively and aesthetically mediating between the past and the present, Nezha (2019) embodies a ‘national style’ which is on one hand hybrid in its inter/nationality, but also culturally delimited in terms of which cultural heritages are held up as emblematic of the nation.","PeriodicalId":43271,"journal":{"name":"Animation-An Interdisciplinary Journal","volume":"16 1","pages":"157 - 174"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44987966","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Discourse of Independent Animation in the Contemporary Chinese Context","authors":"Terrie Man-chi Cheung","doi":"10.1177/17468477211050974","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17468477211050974","url":null,"abstract":"Independent animation is a marginal media form in China, and studies describe how both Chinese artists and scholars of film studies have only started to practice or construct this genre and popular cinema since the 1990s, especially after the Shanke (Chinese Flash animators, 閃客) phenomenon. In this article, the existing discourse of independent animation in contemporary China is critically analyzed by studying mainly what is said and written by the local practitioners and scholars in China. The author’s analysis is based on the assumption that animation should be taken ‘as an art form’, which should be able to express itself freely without any external constraints or intervention by others. Hence, the focus should be placed on the ultimate purpose and meaning of art along with the form. Among the various types of discourses constructed by practitioners, the author argues that the discourse constructed by the contemporary Chinese art scene should be encouraged to keep the nature of independent works so as to give voice to true, personal and inner values, and expressions that are outside the institutionalized and dominating discourse or framework.","PeriodicalId":43271,"journal":{"name":"Animation-An Interdisciplinary Journal","volume":"16 1","pages":"175 - 189"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44095484","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Editorial","authors":"Suzanne H. Buchan","doi":"10.1177/17468477211056402","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17468477211056402","url":null,"abstract":"In the articles in this issue, we have two main foci: sound in animation, and national cinemas and styles. Sound is a formal element of animation (and other types of filmmaking) that, considering its emotional impact and affective power on audiences, has been underrepresented in scholarly research, although this has changed positively in the past decade. The first three articles pursue a shared interest in sound, albeit from very different approaches and positions (two include the often discussed method of ‘mickey-mousing’). In ‘Grains of Sound: Visual and Sonic Textures in Sand or Peter and the Wolf’, Amy Skjerseth begins by pointing out that animation studies needs new and up-to-date models for sound, and should pay similar attention to sound tracks as we do to the image track. Her attention is directed at one film and the director’s collaboration with her composer, to explore how and why the materiality of sound – specifically, sonic materials – enhances the vitality of films’ sand-formed figures and objects. Skjerseth’s proposal is that, rather than the mimicry of mickey-mousing, the film’s sound track emphasizes Eisenstein’s concept of plasmaticness, enhanced by her notion of granularity, through the artist and composer’s improvisations in their symbiotic creative processes. Her discussion has a valuable concentration on the actual manual and material workings of Leaf’s various under-the-camera techniques and the inherent performativity of the straight-ahead method it entails, in particular the fluid granularity of sand. After an explanation of the nuances of timbre, she then turns to an examination of the composer’s work and what she calls ‘grains of sound’ that are experienced multimodally; this is as comparably detailed in method, materiality (analogue and digital) and process as the analysis of Caroline Leaf. Considering the enduring and historical prevalence of tactile and fluid, crispy or crunchy artistic media used in animation, Skjerseth’s microanalysis of the audio and image tracks – and their creation – of single film is to be congratulated: it is detailed and comprehensive, and her notion of ‘granular modulation’ offers a valuable model for others. Indeed, she also suggests a number of experimental animators’ works that could be examined through a similar method. Her suggestion to view the work (and indeed any film) without the sound is one that teachers of animation should be encouraged to follow. An added delight in this article are the multiple word plays, metaphors and turns of phrase employing the lexeme ‘grain’. A Joseph Dial’s ‘“The Blackest Disney Movie of all Time!” A Goofy Movie and the Production of “Film Blackness”’ is less an investigation of Black representation, and more a proposition for how a Black reading of a film that does not work with visible representation of Blackness is possible. Dial does this through a set of approaches to and propositions on the 1995 film that include troubled stereotypes, the coding of","PeriodicalId":43271,"journal":{"name":"Animation-An Interdisciplinary Journal","volume":"16 1","pages":"105 - 109"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43872898","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}