Pedro Serrazina – Animation, Gentrification and Social Experience

This article addresses the practice of animation and its relation to physical space and the social experience. It was presented in 2018 at the Society for Animation Studies conference (Montreal, Canada) and was written not long after the completion of a PhD dissertation dedicated to the concept of animated space. As a practice-based academic project, […]

Ole Christoffer Haga – Film Style in Cinematic VR

In recent years, filmmakers have started to look at Virtual Reality (VR) as a platform for cinematic storytelling (Bucher 2018; Opam 2016; Melnick 2019). When I initially encountered short films for VR and the 360-degrees view, some of my first thoughts were regarding the limitations of the medium. A 360-degree field of view upends many […]

Sara Álvarez Sarrat – Innocent and Invisible: Women Behind Bars in Animated Documentaries

Worldwide concern over the recovery of historical memory or the fight for human rights – including, of course, women’s rights – has led to an increase in the number of productions dedicated to this genre in animation. The animated documentary seems the perfect media for animated films based on historical figures or events, but also […]

Elizaveta Shneyderman – Parameterization: On Animation and Future Corporealities

Embodying Virtual Volumes: Bambi Cannot Die Like Shao-Kahn In Mortal Kombat 11, delivering the final blow to an opposing fighter yields mixed results: a decapitation may spew blood onto the in-game camera watching the battle unfold. Or one can vivisect in real time, a trope of the franchise: a character tears through the mid-section of […]

Nea Ehrlich – Another Planet: Animation and Documentary Aesthetics in Mixed Realities

Charlie Brooker’s 2011 dystopian futuristic Black Mirror episode, “Fifteen Million Merit,” features alienated subjects who are physically shut up in cells made of screens. In this world, people participate as animated avatars in what remains of public spaces. Although Black Mirror is “about the way we live now – and the way we might be […]

Alan Cholodenko – ‘Like Tears in Rain’: The Crypt, the Haunted House, of Animation and Memory in the Era of Hyperreality

The real…erases itself in favour of the more real than the real: the hyperreal—Jean Baudrillard[1] He who has no shadow is merely the shadow of himself—Jean Baudrillard[2] Part I. Introduction This essay is theoretical, speculative, highly so. Theory, from Greek theoria, is speculating. And for many, if not all, of you, this essay may seem very […]

María Lorenzo Hernández – Unanimated Voices: The Spanish Civil War as an emergent subject in Spanish animated short films

This proceeding tries to re-animate the memory of the Spanish Civil War, through its depiction of animated short films produced in Spain in the last decade. The dictatorship of Francisco Franco began in 1936, with the uprising against the Second Republic. The subsequent Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) divided peoples and families, causing a deep social […]

Konstantinos Pappis – The Odd Ones Out: The Rise of YouTube Storytime Animation

The emergence of new media has reshaped the creation and sharing of art in contemporary culture (Catricalà 2015; Krekovic 2003). The arrival of YouTube, in particular, has allowed for “independent modes of producing traditional media genres” (Burgess and Green 2009, n.p) as well as new genres, such as vlogging. An example of a traditional art […]

Joan Ashworth – Animation is a refuge: ‘arrivants’ dwell in the stories of the mind

When we were preparing an animation workshop around storytelling for refugees, or arrivants[1] in Palermo as part of renowned scholar and writer Marina Warner’s Stories in Transit project, some questions arose, including Why might refugees engage with animation? How can animation, as a form of storytelling, offer a home for imagination? How can philosopher Hannah […]

Henry Melki, Ian Montgomery & Greg Maguire – Beauty and The Beast: A Dynamic Relationship Between 3D animation and Adaption to Change

Life of Pi has won numerous awards, including Academy Awards for best Visual Effects and best cinematography. At the Oscars ceremony in 2013, Bill Westenhofer, Visual Effects supervisor for Rhythm and Hues Studios, was interrupted by the theme from Jaws (1975) playing loudly to mask his speech at 44.5 seconds. Westenhofer’s microphone was disconnected, when […]