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Books > Arts & Architecture > Performing arts > Films, cinema > Animation
Animation variously entertains, enchants, and offends, yet there
have been no convincing explanations of how these films do so.
Shadow of a Mouse proposes performance as the common touchstone for
understanding the principles underlying the construction,
execution, and reception of cartoons. Donald Crafton's
interdisciplinary methods draw on film and theater studies, art
history, aesthetics, cultural studies, and performance studies to
outline a personal view of animated cinema that illuminates its
systems of belief and world making. He wryly asks: Are animated
characters actors and stars, just like humans? Why do their
performances seem live and present, despite our knowing that they
are drawings? Why is animation obsessed with distressing the body?
Why were California regional artists and Stanislavsky so
influential on Disney? Why are the histories of animation and
popular theater performance inseparable? How was pictorial space
constructed to accommodate embodied acting? Do cartoon performances
stimulate positive or negative behaviors in audiences? Why is there
so much extreme eating? And why are seemingly insignificant shadows
vitally important? Ranging from classics like The Three Little Pigs
to contemporary works by Svankmajer and Plympton, these essays will
engage the reader's imagination as much as the subject of animation
performance itself.
This book examines the popular and critically acclaimed films of
Pixar Animation Studios in their cultural and historical context.
Whether interventionist sheriff dolls liberating oppressed toys
(Toy Story) or exceptionally talented rodents hoping to fulfill
their dreams (Ratatouille), these cinematic texts draw on popular
myths and symbols of American culture. As Pixar films refashion
traditional American figures, motifs and narratives for
contemporary audiences, this book looks at their politics - from
the frontier myth in light of traditional gender roles (WALL-E) to
the notion of voluntary associations and neoliberalism (The
Incredibles). Through close readings, this volume considers the
aesthetics of digital animation, including voice-acting and the
simulation of camera work, as further mediations of the traditional
themes and motifs of American culture in novel form. Dietmar Meinel
explores the ways in which Pixar films come to reanimate and
remediate prominent myths and symbols of American culture in all
their cinematic, ideological and narrative complexity.
This book analyzes Walt Disney's impact on entertainment, new
media, and consumer culture in terms of a materialist,
psychoanalytic approach to fantasy. The study opens with a taxonomy
of narrative fantasy along with a discussion of fantasy as a key
concept within psychoanalytic discourse. Zornado reads Disney's
full-length animated features of the "golden era" as symbolic
responses to cultural and personal catastrophe, and presents
Disneyland as a monument to Disney fantasy and one man's singular,
perverse desire. What follows after is a discussion of the "second
golden age" of Disney and the rise of Pixar Animation as neoliberal
nostalgia in crisis. The study ends with a reading of George Lucas
as latter-day Disney and Star Wars as Disney fantasy. This study
should appeal to film and media studies college undergraduates,
graduates students and scholars interested in Disney.
* Covers the entire process of creating animated films in an
accessible and approachable way. * Includes colour-coded exercises
to help readers practice the theories explained within. * Heavily
illustrated with full colour images.
Re-frames the computer-animated film as a new genre of contemporary
cinemaWidely credited for the revival of feature-length animated
filmmaking within contemporary Hollywood, computer-animated films
are today produced within a variety of national contexts and
traditions. Covering thirty years of computer-animated film
history, and analysing over 200 different examples, 'The
Computer-Animated Film: Industry, Style and Genre' persuasively
argues that this body of work constitutes a unique genre of
mainstream cinema. Informed by wider technological discourses and
the status of animation as an industrial art form, the book not
only theorises computer-animated films through their formal
properties, but connects elements of film style to animation
practice and the computer-animated film's unique production
contexts.Key FeaturesProvides a wide-ranging focus on a multitude
of animation studios, companies, facilities, divisions and
subsidiaries in Hollywood and beyondSupported throughout by close
textual analysis and clearly marked case studiesExpands the
critical examination of computer-animated films by combining
animation and film theory together with theories of animation
practice, industry papers and original studio production memosCase
StudiesShark Tale (2004)Hoodwinked! (2006)Flushed Away (2006)Over
the Hedge (2006)The Good Dinosaur (2015)Frozen (2013)Zootopia
(2016)Ratatouille (2007)Antz (1998)A Bug's Life (1998)Wall-E
(2008)Toy Story 3 (2010)Toy Story 2 (1999)Cars (2005) / Cars 2
(2011)Happy Feet (2006)Sausage Party (2016)Monsters, Inc.
(2001)Rise of the Guardians (2012)Despicable Me 2 (2013) / Minions
(2015)Surf's Up (2007)Bolt (2008)
This book is the first history of British animated cartoons, from
the earliest period of cinema in the 1890s up to the late 1920s. In
this period cartoonists and performers from earlier traditions of
print and stage entertainment came to film to expand their artistic
practice, bringing with them a range of techniques and ideas that
shaped the development of British animation. These were commercial
rather than avant-garde artists, but they nevertheless saw the new
medium of cinema as offering the potential to engage with modern
concerns of the early 20th century, be it the political and human
turmoil of the First World War or new freedoms of the 1920s. Cook's
examination and reassessment of these films and their histories
reveals their close attention and play with the way audiences saw
the world. As such, this book offers new insight into the changing
understanding of vision at that time as Britain's place in the
world was reshaped in the early 20th century.
This study provides the first book-length critical history of
storyboarding, from the birth of cinema to the present day and
beyond. It discusses the role of storyboarding in key films
including Gone with the Wind , Psycho and The Empire Strikes Back ,
and is illustrated with a wide range of images.
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This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open
Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com.
Animator Norman McLaren is best known for his experimental films
using pioneering techniques and his work as founder of the
animation department of the National Film Board of Canada (NFB),
but little mention is made of his Scottish heritage or his personal
life. Nichola Dobson examines some of the key events and people in
his life through a close examination of his key works and his
personal papers, and discusses how influential they were. By using
archive material to discover his personal identity and close
readings of his films, Norman McLaren rediscovers one of the most
important figures in animation history. Divided into thematic
chapters of significant areas of influence, Dobson analyzes his
formative years growing up in Scotland and his relationship with
fellow Scot, John Grierson; the international travel which
influenced him politically and creatively; the creative arts which
played a vital part of his life; his collaborations with other
artists and his complex, and rarely discussed, personal life. Each
of these chapters considers his key films during those periods with
a close detailed analysis and a further examination of his life
through his correspondence with family and close friends. By
featuring this previously un-published material, the book allows
much of the consideration of the work to be in McLaren's own words
and offers a deep insight into his vast output of films over nearly
50 years.
This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open
Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com.
Princess Mononoke (1997) is one of anime's most important films.
Hayao Miyazaki's epic fantasy broke domestic box office records
when it came out in Japan, keeping pace with the success of
Hollywood films like Titanic (1997). Princess Mononoke was also the
first of Studio Ghibli's films to be distributed outside Japan as
part of a new deal with Disney subsidiary Buena Vista
International. Coinciding with the 20th anniversary of the release
of the film, Rayna Denison curates this new collection to
critically reflect on Princess Mononoke's significance within and
beyond Japanese culture. The collection investigates the
production, and re-production, processes involved in the making of
Princess Mononoke into a global phenomenon and reevaluates the
film's significance within a range of global markets, animation
techniques, and cultures. In revisiting this undeniably important
film, the collection sheds light on the tensions within anime and
the cultural and social issues that Princess Mononoke explores,
from environmental protection to globalization to the
representation of marginalized groups. In this remarkable new
collection, Princess Mononoke is examined as a key player during a
major turning point in Japanese animation history.
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