About Global Animation Theory

Scanning historical and current trends in animation through different perspectives including art history, film, media
and cultural studies is a prominent facet of today's theoretical and historical approaches in this rapidly evolving
field. Global Animation Theory offers detailed and diverse insights into the methodologies of contemporary animation
studies, as well as the topics relevant for today's study of animation. The contact between practical and theoretical
approaches to animation at Animafest Scanner, is closely connected to host of this event, the World Festival of
Animated Film Animafest Zagreb. It has given way to academic writing that is very open to practical aspects of
animation, with several contributors being established not only as animation scholars, but also as artists. This
anthology presents, alongside an introduction by the editors and a preface by well known animation scholar
Giannalberto Bendazzi, 15 selected essays from the first three Animafest Scanner editions. They explore various
significant aspects of animation studies, some of them still unknown to the English speaking communities.

Table of contents
Giannalberto Bendazzi (Independent Scholar, Genoa, Italy)
Foreword

Anthology Editors
Introduction

Section 1: Historical and Theoretical Approaches from International Animation Studies

1. Marcin Gizycki (Academy of Information Technology, Warsaw, Poland / Rhode Island School of Design, USA)
Animation Since 1980: A Personal Journey

2. Paul Wells (Animation Academy at Loughborough University, UK)

Animation in the Gallery and the Gestalt: György Kovásznai and William Kentridge

3. Mareike Sera (Humboldt University Berlin, Germany)

On Analogical Thinking: Jan Švankmajer and Franco “Bifo” Beradi

4. Chunning Guo (Maggie) (Renmin University of China, Beijing, China)

The Successful Chorus of “The Second Wave”: An examination of Feminism's "Manifesto" of Digital Art

5. Olga Bobrowska (Jagiellonian University, Poland)

Seeking Truth in Facts. Historicizing Chinese Animation.

6. Holger Lang (Webster Vienna Private University, Austria)

Austria Unlimited. Limitations and Chances within a Small Production Environment

7. Mihat Ajanovic-Ajan (University West, Trollhättan, Sweden)

Beyond the self-images: The Context and Development of Animated Documentaries, the Cornerstones of Modern Animation in
Sweden

Section 2: Case Studies from Around the World

8. Edwin Carels (School of Arts KASK/HoGent, Belgium)

Short Circuits. On the Impact of the Flipbook in the Work of Robert Breer

9. Mikhail Gurevich (Independent Scholar, Chicago, USA)

“…The film is not about that”. Notes on (re)reading Tale of Tales

10. Andrijana Ružic (Independent Scholar, Milan, Italy)

The Importance of Ranko Munitic´s Work on Zagreb School of Animation.

11. Irena Paulus (Independent Scholar, Zagreb, Croatia)

Animation Experienced through Music: Tomislav Simovic and Zagreb School of Animation

12. Fatemeh Hosseini-Shakib (Tehran Art University, Iran)

Puppet as Not-Puppet: the Notion of 'Puppet' and its Many Connotations in the Works of Barry Purves (the case of Screen Play)

13. Michal Bobrowski (UMCS University, Poland)

Subversive Machinery: DIY Philosophy in Films of Julian Antonisz

14. Dirk de Bruyn (Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia)

Lynsey Martin: A Case study in 1970s Australian Experimental Animation

List of Contributors
Abstracts

The OED defines “animation” as “the act of producing ‘moving pictures’; the
technique, by means of which movement is given, on film, to a series of drawings
(esp. for an animated cartoon)” [1] In his 1985 Glossary of Filmographic Terms,
Jan Gartenberg defines animation as “the arts, techniques and processes involved
in giving apparent movement and life to inanimate objects by means of
cinematography.” [2] The word also refers to the “sequence of drawings made to
create the movement, and for the movement itself when seen on the screen.” [3]
This understanding of animation remains informed by its etymology. The OED
quotes Hobbes’ 1681 description of animation as “that expression which makes us
seem to see the thing before our eyes.” [4] The possibility for a thing to express
animation is predicated upon the capacity of another to induce vitality into
its image and requires an acceptance of the idea that things may be represented
“as alive.” [5] Its roots “anima” and “animus” are Latin for breath, soul, and
mind.” [6] In the popular imagination, the animator, and especially the computer
graphics operator, posses the technological power to implant spirits within
inanimate objects; like Dr. Frankenstein, they are “capable of bestowing animation
upon lifeless matter.” [7] By definition, animation imparts motion. Its earlier use
as “the imparting of any physical quality or virtue” and “the action of inspiring or
filling with any impulse,” became the process of “quickening, vitalizing,” a ritual of
“encouragement,” “enlivening,” as well as the quality itself–“liveliness…vivacity,
sprightliness, brightness.” [8]
While these definitions inform theories of painting, performance, and gesture,
the issues intersecting media theory more generally can be addressed through
cartooning and contemporary film animation. Additionally, these forms provide
many valuable comparisons for generating a media taxonomy. Although
Understanding Media does not directly address the concept of animation,
McLuhan’s thoughts on the visual informationconveyed through cartooning and
television are relevant. Cool media cartoons and comic books “provide very little
data about any particular moment in time , or aspect in space, of an
object.” [9] Animation fills in these gaps, but continues to demand user
involvement in televised cartoons. [10] The cartoon experience, in fact, “has
developed an ever more vigorous life as the electric age advanced.” [11] Comics
contain print-like qualities of the crude woodcut, which then “reappear in the
mosaic mesh of the TV image.” [12] Animated cartoons seem to have anticipated
the Einsteinian electronic age in their “fantasia of discontinuous space-and-
time.” [13] While animation shorts originally preceded feature-length films, the
techniques now supply special-effects imagery for the features themselves. As
television obsolesced aspects of sound-only radio the print cartoon, which had
originally been displaced by radio, resurfaced in the form of the animated
cartoon. [14]
Technical definitions within the discipline of animation studies raise interesting
questions about production and perception. As technology changes the
animation process, should the time , effort, and perhaps obsession formerly
necessary to create animated works remain part of its definition? Should computer
animation, which is increasingly difficult to differentiate from live-action film,
even be considered “animation”? What does it mean for the illusion of motion to
be “created, rather than recorded?” [15] Can the results of a computer “configured
as a filmmaking machine to make decisions regarding image, time , and motion”
be considered animation? “If a non-living thing creates something, is it brought to
life?” [16]
The animation of a picture originally required a large number of separate drawings
. In film animation, small changes in position, recorded frame by frame , create the
illusion of movement. Although shooting single-frame exposures is particular to
the animation process, as the Gartenberg points out, “animation is simply an
exaggerated version of the practice of all film-making. Literally it gives life (or the
illusion of life) to representations of objects, people and animals by recording
them on film and then projecting them at such a speed as to give a sense of real
movement.” [17]
Discussions of animation often involve concepts of metamorphosis,
anthropomorphism, transmogrification, fantasy, mimesis , the polymorphous
perversity of bodies, its oddness and absurdity. Cartoon animation has an
amorphous, elastic quality that allows forms the freedom to move and change–
ordinary objects transform magically, movement is synchronized to music, and
inanimate objects become humanized. Metamorphosis was a founding concept of
animation, beginning with early French animator Emile Cohl, and is commonly
used for fantastic or comic effect. Likewise, transmogrification is one of the
advantages of working in animation rather than in live action. Animated figures
are not grounded in actual physicality–they transform at the whim of the
animator. [18]
By the time the animation industry began to congeal in the early 1900s, there were
already a few well known animators, characters, and studios: Winsor McCay’s
Gertie the Dinosaur , Otto Messmer’s Felix the Cat, Max Fleischer and Walter
Lantz who began their careers at John Bray Studio, and of course, Mickey Mouse
of Walt Disney Studios.

The technical processes and choice of material for the originals to

be photographed delineates the branches of animation. Drawings, cut-outs,
models, dolls, puppets, clay, projected silhouettes, and real objects, including
fluids, colored gases and smoke, are among the mo re commonly animated
mediums. [19] Hand-drawn animation films are made by drawing, etching,
scratching, painting or attaching items directly onto a film’s surface without the
use of a camera. Object Animation manipulates three dimensional objects “either
still at the time of camera exposure (three-dimensional [stop-motion] animation)
or in motion during the exposure of each frame (totalized [go-motion]
animation).” [20] Pixilation animates the movement of live actors photographed a
frame at a time in continuous action at varying camera speeds–footage later
modified by stop- or step-frame, or optical printing techniques [21] The cartoon
film is an animated film in which different phases of two-dimensional movement
are drawn on paper or multiple transparent “animation” cells (often as part of the
Disney-developed multiplane system), and then filmed using stop motion or
special animation camera. [22] While cartoon films may give a sense of depth or
achieve sophisticated three-dimensional simulation, films that reproduce filmic
qualities (such as perspective, lighting, or grain conventions) through computer
technology are more properly termed “computer generated imagery ” (CGI)
animation, or according to their particular technology.
Presently, animation cameras (designed for single-frame photography and
photographing at continuous speeds) and the animation stand (which secures the
camera positions above the table on which the artwork is placed) have been
entirely computerized. Computer animation is achieved by photographing in stop-
motion the illumination of a cathode ray tube (CRT), in accordance with signals
fed to the CRT by a computer. [23] Pixar’s Toy Story(1995) was the first animated
feature created entirely via computer. Computer generated images have not only
created a separate branch of animation, but have also profoundly affected other
kinds of animation. First used in abstractfilms or as part of educational films,
computer animation continues to produce increasingly sophisticated methods of
generating and integrating computer animation into the filmmaking process.
As digital processes evolve, the animation process becomes more overtly
discontinuous, while the resulting films become nearly seamless. Films are
digitally encoded as pixels and stored in computers; their images are available for
infinite electronic manipulation.
The animated feature demonstrates industrial authorship to a greater extent than
even large-scale live-action Hollywood productions. Historically, the authorship of
animated cartoons has been attributed to the production company, which
developed and owned the technology necessary for the project, despite the
common misconception that Walt Disney was the sole producer of his company’s
films. Potential authors of contemporary features include large animators staffs
and CGI team members, technical directors, voice actors, lyricists, orchestrators,
and musical performers. In an example of unlikely authorship, after openly gay
Disney animator Andreas Deja acknowledged the effect his sexuality had on his
creations of several characters, his voice emerged amidst the formal overseers of
the entire project to be the primary creator of “his” characters, and producer of the
film’s (mostly subtextual) meaning. [24] Similarly, the general acceptance of an
AIDS analogy in Beauty and the Beast was legitimated by proposing that Howard
Ashman, the film’s lyricist and music producer who had recently died as a result of
the AIDS virus, was the film’s auteur. [25]
According to Walter Benjamin, popular animation is a realistic, but not
naturalistic, expression of alienation in modern life; “the cartoons make clear that
even our bodies do not belong to us…what parades as civilization is actually
barbarism. [26] In the early 1930’s the Mickey Mouse character was targeted by
reform groups and banned by several state censor boards. Soon after, the bawdy
sexual humor and aggressiveness of Disney’s shorts gave way to calmer morality,
and “the studio began to alter not just its carnivalesque subject matter, but also its
animation style.” [27] Non-Disney characters like Popeye and Betty Boop
underwent similar processes of refinement. [28]Eisenstein valued the “plasmatic”
quality of cartoon animation, characterized by a “rejection of once and forever
allotted form, freedom from ossification, the ability to dynamically assume any
form.” [29] In order to experience ecstasy in the plasmaticness’ of existence, “man
searches for a n image with traits capable of resembling this state and sensation.”
The polyformic capabilities of instability, inconsistency of form and the fluidity and
suddenness of formation are “brought to the viewer…by these seemingly strange
traits which permeate folktales, cartoons, the spineless circus performer and the
seemingly groundless scattering of extremities in Disney’s
drawings.” [30] According to Tom Gunning, this concept of a “lost changeability”
is closely connected to Eisenstein’s own concept of inner speech, primitive
language and mimesis: “For Eisenstien, primitive language represents a stage in
which language was less abstract, more descriptive of physical reality, of actions,
where signifier and signified were closely bound together.” [31] It signaled a return
to totemism by imaging the rebirth of universal animism.
Eisenstein worked with the following definition of “animation”: “belief that all
objects possess a natural life or vital force or that they are endowed with an
indwelling spirit .” [32] These possibilities are realized during the uprising of
Delacroix’s black collectibles in Bamboozled and their haunting yet tender
aftermath in the credits. Eisenstein loved the Three Little Pigs 1933 Silly
Symphony, but harshly criticized Bambi (1942), comparing it to Chinese
landscape painting. [33]
Much of animation’s future becomes increasingly intertwined with its adjacent
industries as computer-generated imagery plays a greater role in special effects for
live-action features (e.g. Jurassic Park (Spielberg, 1992). Hybrid live-action and
animation movies, from the extremely successful Who Framed Roger
Rabbit? (Zemeckis, 1980) to Cool World (Bakshi, 1992) and Space Jam(Pytka,
1996), are often promoted as the inauguration of a novel medium, but many early
forays into film animation combined traditional film and hand-drawn animation
techniques. In fact, all the major studios have all made regular excursions into this
format. These seemingly exclusive styles, though, are often subtly braided.
Computer programs paint colors onto cells (or, as in Waking Life (Linklater,
2001), onto photographed f rames) and efficiently and consistently join the
multiple layers of an image. Digital technology is often used to simulate the look of
traditional cell animation, and Toy Story’s figures, for example, resembled
plasticine models. Similarly, The Mask (Russel, 1994) used CGI to rework many
classic Warner gags in live-action format. The technical developments that have
made these films possible have simultaneously leveled the animation field.
Flash Frame is a simple animation method that has been made widely available
through the i nternet and allows a broader range of people to become animators
and have their work seen. Todd Rundgren compares Flash to silkscreen, pencil,
and traditional cartooning. [34] Many of these programs intended to promote
music video style and culture in an online instant. Interestingly, MTV has
consistently taken responsibility for mainstreaming underground animation
techniques into cutting edge television graphics, and developed cartoon series’ of
its own. Its Celebrity Death Match (recently released as a Playstation2
video game ) might be considered the contemporary claymation version of Duck
Amuck (1953)–Chuck Jones’s noteworthy exploration of cell animation
techniques. [35]
The term “animation school of violence” wryly describes the “spectacle of
punishment” in animated cartoons, in which characters are flattened, blown out,
and distorted in all sorts of ways from all sorts of physical abuse, often at the hand
of another cartoon figure. [36] Animation’s importance in Japanese popular
culture is well known, and the medium functions as its primary vehicle for
participation in global culture. While its visual heritage dates back to at least the
17th century, many of Japan’s pioneer animators admired Disney animation,
Japanese anime often appeals to Americans in its rejection or resistance to the
cultural and production values dominated by Disney. [37]The pictoral history it
shares with manga (graphic novels) diverges in anime’s distinctive cuts, format,
time limits, and other “strictures of film inevitably lead to significant changes
between the texts.” [38] One particular anime genre explores the
cyborg/robotic body, and metamorphosis is central to Otomo Katsuhiro’s Akira.
Like Max Renn in Videodrome, protagonists may equally resist physical
transformation and nihilistically reel in its splendor, denying the transforming
body in a quest for normality and asserting their monstrous identities. [39]

The term “animation” has a particularly complex relationship to the concept of

“media,” and its connections to other classes of media are similarly convoluted. A
medium is animated when it comes to life for the viewer, but animation itself is a
medium, as well as a process that accommodates a variety of other mediums. The
definition of “animation” and animated works themselves inform theories of media
in their relationships to time and space, creation and life, nature and magic, the
body and its possibilities.