Animation Practice, Process & Production - Volume 5, Issue 1, 2016

This article examines how to define animation. It aims to critique attempts to briefly define animation in its essence, through an examination of several quandaries and pitfalls related to such attempts, including their lines of reasoning, justifications and defining boundaries. It shows that definitions of animation are influenced by how individuals attempting a definition relate to animation (animators, scholars, critics, etc.). It concludes that most attempts to define animation succinctly resemble themselves and present similar problems, being inadequate to properly explain the term and its relation to live-action film. Since animation cannot be properly defined in these succinct formulations, a more comprehensive and developed definition is proposed.

In the literature of animated film it is common to find opinions of authors that place anime in a style devoid of dynamism, with stylized designs and technical limitations in its process of creation. This article shows how the creativity and knowledge of the artists and Japanese animators have managed to develop a new model of audio-visual expression effective and balanced, which has contributed to the commercial and international success of anime in recent years.

The relevance of acting theory to character animation was recognized early in the history of animation. In the 1930s, Disney animators studied the performances of actors to improve the quality of their animation and this tradition has continued into contemporary practices. The following article is derived from a recent practice-led study, which sought to adapt David Mamet and William H. Macy’s acting technique, Practical Aesthetics, to 3D computer animation practice. Reflecting upon a series of short character animation studies, this article shows how the animator can create authentic and therefore more believable character performances via the techniques of Practical Aesthetics.

How might an animator distil and study emotion? Could animation itself be a means to unlock meaning that previous experiments have not been able to access? Animation has the power to both highlight and conceal emotions as expressed through body movement and gesture. When we view live-action (human interview) documentary footage, we are exposed not just to the spoken words but also to the subtle nuances of body movements. How much might be lost when documentary footage is transposed into animation, or, indeed, what might be gained, translated through the personal and artistic view of the animator? Drawing on my own previous experience as a games animator, now using research through practice methodology, this article explores the results of the first of a series of animations created to explore the more subtle nuances of gesture. Through the medium of a documentary-style interview, opposing topics are used to evoke strong emotions – first, of happiness, and then of sadness – with a view to accessing real rather than acted (simulated) emotions and their associated body movements.

This article presents an overview on a rare genre from independent animation, the animated ‘jams’ or collective films, where all invited authors are free to contribute creatively to the ensemble. Animated ‘jams’ have, therefore, a great power to free the imagination, so that the results are virtually unrepeatable by another group of animators, much less through a planned work system. Therefore, animated ‘jams’ stimulate innovation, leading to experimental films that achieve notoriety at cinema and animation festivals because of their originality. Musicality, absurd humour, improvisation and abstraction are common features of these art films, where any narrative will remain in the background. Several examples of this unusual genre are discussed, from Marv Newland’s bold proposal to produce the film Anijam (Newland, 1984) – which shows a strong influence of the surrealistic ‘exquisite corpse’ – to learning experiences using the animated ‘jam’ as a strategy to introduce students to animation, often coordinated by renowned animators who share their techniques and procedures in the workshops. The article will also pay attention to a singular figure, Dr Miquel Guillem, who significantly supported the realization of animated ‘jams’ at Universitat Politècnica de València, as a teaching methodology that promotes collective work. Furthermore, this article will gather first-hand the production process of one of these ‘jams’: The Cat Dances with its Shadow (Lorenzo, 2012).