Introduction

The challenge of communicating emotional content to an audience via animated characters has existed since the art form first appeared. As animation techniques and technology have advanced, animators and character designers find themselves with a multitude of resources and tools for the creation of facial expressions so as to effectively communicate the emotions of their animated characters within each scene. However, by using evolved forms of symbolic facial expression, which are widely accepted, these technologies and techniques often overlook the unconscious communication conveyed via actual human facial expressions. The fundamentals of this instant and unconscious emotional communication have been well studied and documented, yet the systems developed by the scientific community for reading and interpreting facial communication have only occasionally and recently been applied by animators.

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Scratching the Surface of Online Animated Narratives

Introduction
The flat simplified graphics and limited animation of Flash online creations recall 1950 and 1960s cartoons for TV and stand in stark contrast to the photo-realistic forms and naturalistic movement of high-end 3D computer realisations. Celebrated for its ease of use, its affordability, and its enhanced dissemination, Flash has become the ‘people’s choice’ in animation software. Yet its widespread use and apparent simplicity (its association with pop culture ‘toons’) veil sophisticated modes of reception. Just as the animations of the Zagreb School and the United Productions of America (UPA) studio, with their pared down graphics, stylised forms and limited movement, are now feted as unique animated expressions, Flash animations can also be appreciated for exploiting medium-specific narrative effects via reflexive strategies and interactivity.

This paper argues that despite outward appearances (simple graphics and limited animated movement), Flash can engage an audience in more complex relations with the text through active participation (via interactive functions and reflexive representations) than more passive modes of reception (often associated with high-end realist animations). Similar to comic art, Flash animations are able to activate imagination in the audience by offering representational cues rather than providing an immersive experience; in distancing an audience from the illusion - via stylised imagery, flattened space, non-naturalistic movement and overt transitions - space is provided for critical reflection.

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I am a hand with six fingers with webs in between. Instead of fingernails I have petite, sharp, sweet-toothed little tongues with which I lick the world.
Jan Švankmajer, Self-portrait, 1999 (2002, 6)

Jan Švankmajer’s animated films are renowned for their tactile dimensions. Heads devour one another in devastating conversations, objects collide painfully with mismatched intentions, lovers’ bodies melt into one in a tender embrace (Dimensions of Dialogue, 1982). A master at extending filmic experience to include tactile as well as audiovisual sensations, Švankmajer also offers us a unique vision of the communicative powers of touch. We can draw this insight out if, instead of observing Švankmajer as a filmmaker whose movies work at a tactile level, we regard him as a Czech Surrealist for whom touch is indispensable. Although Švankmajer is best known for his films, the vitality of touch in his creative practice is most apparent in a range of static artworks and poems made during a period (1974 -1983) in which he experimented intensively with tactile experience.

Commentators have made reference to this interlude when noting how touch is integral to Švankmajer’s films. However, film/animation scholars have not studied the tactile experiments as artworks in their own right, nor has their intrinsic value to the artist been analysed in detail. Naturally enough, film/animation scholars are more interested in observing the application of his tactile experiments in his films. If, however, we focus on Švankmajer’s turn from film to tactile art (instead of the other way round) we discover a more remarkable objective. In his tactile experiments Švankmajer animates with touch, in the same way as he animates with a camera (or a pen, or a puppet). His aim is to liberate tactile perception as a means of poetic expression.


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Introduction
The Internet’s potential for global shrinkage, electronic travel, and animated transmission is a technological development that would have left citizens of previous centuries stupefied by such wondrous demonstrations of magic. Typing in the address for the Czech animator Michaela Pavlatova’s website transports one as if by sorcery to Prague, and a realm of moving words and images with a distinctly unique and deliciously demented perspective. Her site embodies an attitude that seems rather different from the outlook of artists and animators in the English-speaking West, and while difficult to pinpoint exactly, consists of a mixture of irony, black humor, a delighting in the absurd and the erotic, yet also a very moving focus upon the intricate nuances of domestic life and relationships.

Such an irreverent and soulful blend certainly contains a strong universal appeal, and Pavlatova has received numerous awards and accolades at international film festivals. In 1992, she was nominated for an Oscar for her animation Words, Words, Words (1991), and in 2006 she received the equivalent of a Czech Oscar for her most recent animation, Carnival of Animals (2006). Her particular vision can be seen as both drawing on, and departing from, features that have come to be associated with the Czech animation tradition. This tradition in the context of animation history has acquired such an aura of significance and weight that the term seems to be inscribed in capital letters. Yet Pavlatova is a vital contemporary player on the international animation scene, and a sure sign that the Czech animation tradition is fluid, rather than a practice immortalized in stone. She acknowledges her artistic inheritance, but also plays with expectations, allowing for the injection of new aesthetic and conceptual considerations. Over the course of this paper, I will explore some examples that reflect this duality, and consider how Pavlatova incorporates a uniquely female perspective that differs from that of many of her male artistic elders and peers.

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Animation and Aboriginal Children in Taiwan

Introduction

Taiwan aboriginal means the residents who have been living in Taiwan before the immigration from Mainland China in the seventeenth century. The Council of Indigenous People, Executive Yuan in 2006 recognized thirteen aboriginal tribes in Taiwan. They are Tayal, Saysiat, Bunun, Tsou, Rukai, Paiwan, Puyuma, Amis, Yami, Thao, Kavalan, Taroko and Sakizaya. Their combined population is four hundred and seventy-four thousand people. This constitutes two percent of the population of Taiwan, distributed throughout the central mountains and the east coast (Taiwan Aboriginal Tribes 2007).

The living styles of these tribes are grounded by their environments. They make a living from whatever resources are available. Those living on a mountain live off the mountain by hunting and farming while those living near the water live off the water by farming and fishing.

All the aboriginal tribes in Taiwan pay attention to ancestral belief. They believe that their ancestors’ spirits are living high in the mountains. Each tribe has unique memorial ceremonies. Some of their cultures have fused due to intermarriage or familiarity by shared locations. They dance and sing for their ancestors to favour them with good health and a substantial harvest the following year. They perform very well in music, culture, and sports endeavours.

However, the educational system in Taiwan disadvantages indigenous children. They have education at primary schools and high school generally, but fewer students continue their learning in higher education. They receive less educational opportunities and resources than children in the rest of the country, for they are living in the mountains and remote eastern regions. According to the survey by the Ministry of Education, most of the primary and high school teachers prefer to teach in the city schools, with some teachers working in the aboriginal tribes for few years as a passport to another school for teaching. Although all the aboriginal primary schools are small scale, the allocated educational resources are below the national average. Often the management strategies and the teaching methods are not beneficial in furthering traditional tribal values and culture with children. Thus the majority of aboriginal children learn traditional values and culture from their tribe and family (Aboriginal Education 2007).

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Critical Significance of Historical Research

Animation has been practised in Australia from a relatively early stage in the worldwide history of cinematic animation, as evidenced by quite mature examples of cutout animation by cartoonist Harry Julius beginning in 1912. It may therefore seem odd that there is comparatively little written of its history. In America and Europe established histories of animation have been recorded. The growth of the medium in these other countries led to the comparatively early establishment of institutions teaching its history and practice.

A history of animation is not a definitive or closed text. Rather it is the collection of information as sources diminish with time, and its evaluation and sifting to construct a factual narrative. But in Australia there is little firm basis upon which to assess the Australian contribution to the medium, or the trends towards the future. The progress of the major commercial companies has been spasmodic, a series of peaks and troughs in which the troughs have fortunately been levelled to an extent by the work of smaller companies and individual independent animators.

There is need for a recorded history - perhaps more than one is necessary to fully reveal the multi-layered identity of animation in Australia. With animation’s becoming an accepted discipline for study and source for critical writing, it becomes important to define each country’s history of its foundations and growth, whatever the significance, to identify each national animation in its subject and form, and to stimulate its capacity to survive as a vigorous medium both nationally and internationally.

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