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The Animation
Studies Reader
Edited by
Nichola Dobson,
Annabelle Honess Roe,
Amy Ratelle and Caroline Ruddell
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Approaching Animation
and Animation Studies
Lilly Husbands and Caroline Ruddell
Animation encompasses an extraordinarily wide-ranging set of techniques
and practices and thus constitutes an equally diverse field of study. Because
of this diversity, animation presents particular challenges in terms of
agreeing on a single definition, and similarly it defies a unified theoretical
approach to studying it. This chapter seeks to explore these issues and to
outline exactly why animation is difficult to define, and why interdisciplinary
theoretical approaches to studying it are necessary. We will outline some of
the main ways that we might think about animation, in terms of how (or
even whether) it can be defined and what some of its unique features and
expressive capacities are. In doing so, this chapter offers an introduction to
some of the key theoretical building blocks of animation studies.
What is animation?
What is useful when thinking about animation is to ask oneself, and to
continue to ask oneself, some fairly simple questions. For example, ‘what
is animation?’, and ‘what can it do?’ ‘How is it different or similar to live-
action?” On the surface these are simple enough questions, but ones that also
prove surprisingly elusive. Consider the first question ~ ‘what is animation?”
One way to approach this is to consider different types of animation
and we could try to answer the question by listing many examples and6 ‘THE ANIMATION STUDIES READER
techniques, including scratch film, lightning sketches, stop motion, 2D cel
animation, 3D computer animation, motion and performance capture. But
simply listing different techniques of animation does not help us to define
its ontology, or its fundamental nature, beyond basic material terms — i.e.
the process and material of its construction.’ We might instead consider
key studios, directors or animators, all of whom have different styles and
techniques, for example the stylized realism of Disney and Pixar, the scratch
films of Len Lye, the silhouette cut outs of Lotte Reiniger and the sand or
ink on glass of Caroline Leaf. Again, however, simply listing those involved
in creating animation does not sufficiently provide an understanding of
what animation és.
If listing techniques, animators or studios does not provide much in
the way of answers, then it might help to consider what makes animation
different from live-action. First, animation is produced frame-by-frame or
in computer-animated increments, whereas live-action cinema is filmed in
real time. Secondly, animation is entirely constructed, whereas live-action
has a ‘profilmic world” that exists in front of the camera. These two key
differences between live-action and animation are at the heart of attempts
to define animation.
Philip Denslow, after acknowledging that there is no single definition
of animation, writes that ‘the reason we are examining this issue is that
no matter what definition you choose, it faces challenges from new
developments in the technology used to produce and distribute animation”
(1997: 1). Denslow goes on to outline a number of instances where the
uses of various technologies problematize a single definition of animation;
Denslow’s examples, where he wonders whether virtual reality or ‘computer
generated lifeform simulation’ can be considered animation, are almost
certainly accepted as examples of animated texts today (1997). Unlike
Denslow, who is reluctant to settle on one definition of animation, Brian
Wells has argued that one definition should be possible and once outlined
should be adopted by all in the academic community. For Wells, a series
of properties define animation such as movement and ‘aliveness’ (2011),
and he also prioritizes its construction frame-by-frame. Raz. Greenberg is
keen to differentiate animation from film and insists they must be defined
separately, arguing that animation can be defined according to the presence
or absence of objects when he says ‘an initial definition for the animated text
is “the process of movement or change, performed by an artificially-created
text-specific object” (2011: 6). The construction of movement is key for
Greenberg.
Despite Greenberg’s and Wells's separate attempts to ‘lock down’ a
definition of animation these have for the most part not been taken up. This
is probably because (despite Brian Wells's frustration about such arguments)
animation is extremely wide-ranging, exists across different media and
genres, and is produced with so many different and continually changingAPPROACHING ANIMATION AND ANIMATION STUDIES 7
technologies, that it is likely that few scholars see much value in having a
one-size-fits-all definition, Nichola Dobson takes this view in her Historical
Dictionary of Animation and Cartoons, suggesting that due to the very fluid
nature of the form’ single definitions are problematic (2009: xxxvii-xxxviii).
While such definitions have not taken hold, the notion that animation is an
entirely constructed form has become a central tenet of animation studies.
If we cannot define animation in any one meaningful way, we can consider
how we recognize it visually, particularly alongside live-action. It is simple
enough to distinguish between the animated and live-action components
of Who Framed Roger Rabbit (Robert Zemeckis 1988), for example, but
sometimes difficult to identify the use of animation techniques to ‘doctor’,
alter or enhance live-action images, as is standard in contemporary
mainstream commercial Hollywood cinema. An interesting example is the
film Gladiator (Ridley Scott 2000) where a computer-generated version
of Oliver Reed had to be used to finish his scenes because he died during
shooting. Here, such unprecedented events during filming led to the use
of animation to ‘fix’ the problem. In this context, the differences between
animation and live-action are often, and increasingly, difficult to discern.
Even in 1997, Denslow noted the ‘problem’: that it is increasingly difficult
to tell the difference between some examples of animation and live-
action, most notably with regard to compositing techniques (1997: 2). The
potential confusion between what might be animated and what might be
live-action has grown exponentially in the decades since Denslow’s writing.
Compositing techniques (the combination of animated images and live-
action images into one single image) in particular complicate the recognition
of animation. While Roger Rabbit is clearly animated and Eddie Valiant
(Bob Hoskins) is clearly live-action, in a special effects-heavy superhero!
action film such as Wonder Woman (Patty Jenkins 2017), we may not
always recognize what elements of the images are traditionally shot on film,
or what has been enhanced or altered through animation techniques. Darley
would call this a ‘hybrid medium’, in a similar way to how Mark Langer
refers to a ‘collapse of [...] boundary’ between live-action and animation
(quoted in Darley 2007: 69).
In contemporary cinema this ‘collapse of boundary’ is often apparent. A
memorable example is The Life of Pi (Ang Lee 2012), which depicts a tiger
in the same diegetic space ~a small lifeboat - as Pi; we know that a tiger was,
not in the same spatial field as actor Suraj Sharma on filming, and we are
aware that this is a case of compositing (whether we are familiar with the
term or not). Two things are likely to happen on such viewing: first that we
might try to understand how such images were achieved (or if we know the
techniques involved we will look for evidence of them), and secondly, this
does not distract from our enjoyment of the scene because a certain “realism”
is achieved (see Mihailova in this volume). Where we may be distracted
is where, for example, animation, without live-action footage, is used to8 ‘THE ANIMATION STUDIES READER
depict the human; Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (Hironobu Sakaguchi
and Moronori Sakakibara 2001) and Beowulfs (Robert Zemeckis 2007)
photorealistic depiction of their characters is distracting. We are aware this
it is animation but it is striving too hard to be live-action/photorealistic to
the extent that it is unsettling to the viewer (see Sobchack 2006, and Bode
in this volume).
Given the lack of consensus on a definition of animation, and the fact
that in themselves definitions do not tend to be overly useful (something
which most animation scholars agree on), it might be more constructive to
consider some of animation’s unique qualities, particularly in relation to
what it has the capacity to do visually. All animation techniques share the
capacity for plasticity and for depicting life and movement. Indeed, there are
two unique properties that have deeply informed the study of animation and
could be considered as distinctive qualities of animation: the illusion of life
and metamorphosis.
Animation’s unique properties:
The illusion of life and metamorphosis
Esther Leslie argues that ‘animation is understood to be the inputting of
life, or the inputting of the illusion of life, into that which is flat or inert
or a model or an image’ (2014: 28). This ‘illusion of life’ is a feature
that pervades animation studies and is often claimed as central to what
animation is.’ Animation’s illusion of life comes in part from the creation
of movement, because movement suggests life as opposed to the stillness
of death. Movement in animation, because it is created frame-by-frame,
is an illusion, unlike in live-action film where it is captured in/on camera.
Indeed, movement is stressed in several authors’ definitions of animation,
including Norman McLaren’s oft-quoted notion that ‘animation is not the
art of drawings that move but the art of movements that are drawn’ (quoted
in Furniss 1998: 5). However, the creation of movement does not always
entail the illusion of life. While the illusion of life is readily apparent in
animation that creates a character, such as Mickey Mouse, who appears
‘alive’ by virtue of his movement, it would be less apparent in abstract
animated shapes that are animated to move in time to music, or an animated
company logo that may well depict movement without creating any sense of
‘life’. This distinction indicates what is problematic about understanding the
‘illusion of life’ as a central feature of animation: while it is applicable to a
huge proportion of animated examples (including all character animation),
it is not a property of all animation.
Because animation is completely constructed and produced incrementally,
it has the capacity for depicting metamorphoses. Paul Wells defines thisAPPROACHING ANIMATION AND ANIMATION STUDIES 9
as ‘the ability for an image to literally change into another completely
different image, for example, through the evolution of the line, the shift
in formations of clay, or the manipulation of objects or environments’ and
he notes that metamorphoses is ‘unique to the animated form’ (1998: 69).
Aylish Wood’s work on animated space (reprinted in this volume) provides
a very useful example of how thinking about metamorphosis can illuminate
the study of animation (2006). Wood’s arguments are about particular
kinds of animation, such as sand and ink on glass, that highlight the
fluidity of animation particularly through the ways that space is imagined
and produced in the films she analyses. For Wood, because we can see ‘in
between’ the frames, and because we can see ‘the sustained metamorphoses
of resolving transitions’, space becomes an expressive element in its own
right (2006: 150).
Although Wood is discussing particular kinds of _ animation,
metamorphosis is central to how we might think about animation more
generally. It captures the constructed nature of animation in a very visible
ways it forces us to think about frame by frame construc
incremental movement as we can sce the sand/ink transforming between
frames. Metamorphosis also raises the question of how we might engage
with such images and their transition from one thing into another; for
Wood, the movement of the sand/ink is a further element of the text that the
viewer might engage with
Both metamorphoses and the illusion of life can be thought of in terms
of movement, but even this can be considered problematic if applied to
all animation. Many examples of animated texts tend to foreground their
‘animatedness’, or medium specificity, and to call attention to themselves
through unconventional techniques and uses of technology. For instance,
works by experimental animators such as Robert Breer or Jodie Mack
that make use of dissimilar images in consecutive frames offer radically
different experiences that are not based on the continuity of movement
across frames (thus effectively disrupting habitual expectations of
animation’s presentation of the illusion of life). Karen Beckman,
discussing Mclaren’s and Peter Kubelka’s writings on animation,
observes that their thoughts reveal that an illusion of movement ‘is not
a given in animation’; only visual change between frames is necessary
(2014: 3).
n or creation of
Animation aesthetics and spectatorship
Considering how difficult itis to establish a single definition of animation or
even to identify its unique, yet universal, properties, other approaches to the
study of animation instead shift the emphasis from the animation itself to10 ‘THE ANIMATION STUDIES READER
the audience by investigating the diverse ways we perceive and experience it
in its multifarious forms. Indeed, examining animation in spectatorial terms
opens up opportunities to explore nor only what animation is but also what
it can do ~ what it can show us and enable us to feel.
One of the greatest philosophical conundrums of moving images in
general, and animation in particular, lies in the complex relation between
its ontology (what it is in material terms) and our phenomenological
engagement with it (how we perceive and experience it). Building on
McLaren’s emphasis on the interstices between frames, Keith Broadfoot
and Rex Butler note in their contribution to Cholodenko’s The Illusion
of Life that ‘what we see, but what cannot be seen, is two images and no
image - the space between images - at once’ (1991: 271). Animation, as we
experience it, is in a constant state of becoming, and when it is arrested for
definition or analysis it ceases to be fully what it is while in motion. Our
access to animation’s illusionistic spectacle is necessarily filtered through
our sensorial experience of it. This perceptual paradox is one of the reasons
that animation spectatorship is an important aspect of animation studies.
As an art form, animation has the potential to produce and manipulate
imagery in myriad graphical ways. Thus, studying it often requires taking
into consideration the particular ways in which it presents itself, or its
formal aesthetics (e.g. the interrelationship between its audiovisual style,
technique, medium). Aspects of spectatorial experience, accounted for by
means of aesthetic analysis, often inform broader historical, cultural or
conceptual analyses and interpretations of the art form.
Animation as a technical process offers artists extraordinary potential
for formal experimentation and expressive freedom. It has a remarkable
capacity for imaginative visualization, and the diversity of experiences that
can arise out of that creative potential is part of what makes animation such
a fascinating object of study. Throughout its history, animation’s capacity
to visualize virtually anything has been put to many different uses. Many
scholars have remarked on its limitless artistic potential for the creation
of fictional worlds and characters, its ability to recreate events or evoke
subjective ‘ideas, feelings and sensibilities’ in documentary (Honess Roe
2011: 227), and its aptness for the visualization of data, concepts and supra-
sensible natural phenomena in science and educational films, and much
more besides.
When considering the diverse and distinctive experiences that animations
offer us, it becomes quite clear that any one universalizing theory or
description of animation spectatorship will not suffice. In her introduction
to Pervasive Animation Suzanne Buchan writes that ‘an effective approach
to this complexity is to use pluralist and interdisciplinary methods [...]
and, to develop approaches that take into account the differences between
celluloid and digital film experience and the platforms these technologies
and techniques use’ (2013: 2).APPROACHING ANIMATION AND ANIMATION STUDIES u
Animation appeals to the body and the imagination in many ways
that are quite different to live-action cinema ~ even the most ‘invisible’
uses of computer animation, in the form of visual effects discussed above,
often offer visual experiences that would be impossible to capture with
a straightforward cinematographic process. Although animations often
make use of live-action filmmaking conventions, they also present their
own visual languages that vary enormously across styles, techniques,
production contexts, industries, cultures and time periods. Buchan argues
that animation often presents its own ‘world’ that provides spectators
with certain phenomenological, psychological and affective experiences
that are peculiar to it, demanding of spectators a combination of personal
interpretation, real-world understanding and acceptance of the work’s own
aesthetic logistics (2006: 25). She writes:
The animation film is utterly unique in its representation of graphic and
plastic universes and impossible spaces and in its ‘ability’ to transcend
physical laws which govern our experience. It is therefore crucial to our
understanding of animation spectatorship to develop and describe our
understanding of this particular set of conditions, which in turn can assist
an approach to individual films. (2006: 25)
Because spectatorial experience arises from encounters with the particularities
of a specific animation and its own ‘set of intricate complexities’ (Buchan
2006: 25), investigations of animation spectatorship tend to focus closely
on one work or a small number of works at a time. This offers scholars
an opportunity to account not only for the historical, cultural or narrative
elements of an animation but also for the different ways in which the
particular stylistic, technical and technological features of a given animation
achieve their effects and ‘modes of appearing’ (Sobchack 2011: 195).
Animations using different styles and techniques will have very different
‘modes of appearing’, which in turn will affect the kinds of experiences they
invite. For instance, a scratch animation such as Norman MeLaren’s Blinkity
Blank (1955) that depicts semi-abstract figures that move very rapidly on the
shallow surface of a black background in time to a musical soundtrack will
elicit different responses than the realist aesthetics of Walt Disney's Bambi
(1942), with its use of naturalistic two-dimensional-drawn characters moving
in relation to detailed painted backgrounds that were shot with a multi-plane
camera. These sorts of aesthetic distinctions are equally important in thinking
about forms of animation that do not adhere to either short or feature-length
narrative paradigms. For instance, a two-dimensional motion graphics-based
animation that aims to convey information rather than a narrative will illicit
mental and physiological responses that differ to some degree from those
evoked by the immersive spectacle of a live-action hybrid like Avatar (James
Cameron 2009).12 ‘THE ANIMATION STUDIES READER
Approaching animation spectatorship requires a careful consideration
of the way that spectators’ experiences of animation can be theorized.
‘These approaches are often founded on the premise that human beings’
perceptual faculties respond similarly to particular stimuli, and thus
certain experiences can be reasonably assumed to be similar among
spectators of an animated work. Phenomenological approaches to
animation in particular attempt to address this issue by describing both
the objective and subjective aspects of engaging with a moving image
work, By rooting investigations of experience in close formal analyses
of the works themselves, they aim to ensure that their descriptions of
experience are not overly subjective but rather, as Vivian Sobchack notes,
‘sufficiently comprehensible and resonant to others who might possibly
inhabit [them]’ (2009: 438).
Animation scholars use numerous methodologies in their approaches
to spectatorship. Scholars including Buchan, Sobchack, Jennifer Barker,
Tom Gunning, Aylish Wood and Joanna Bouldin have discussed animation
in experiential and/or phenomenological terms. Other scholars such as
Torben Grodal (2009) and Dan Torre (2017) have used cognitive theory
to interrogate the experiences of animation spectatorship. These and other
scholars have addressed the experiential perception of space and ‘spatial
transformation’ (Wood 2006: 133), movement and metamorphosis that
are unique to animated moving images. Their works discuss a variety of
different material and technological types of animation. Bouldin, for
instance, focuses on the relationship between spectators and animated
bodies in cartoons, noting that ‘animation extends the possibilities of the
viewers” embodied responses’ (2000: 63). Barker has argued for the tactile
appeal of hyperreal computer animations like Toy Story (John Lasseter
1995) (2009: 46), and Sobchack describes the unusual sensations evoked by
viewing computer-generated morphs (2000: 132). Buchan, in her study of
the Quay Brothers’ puppet animations, analyses the twofold status of object
animation, concentrating on the way that it‘represents a different “world”
for the spectator, something between “a world,” created with the animation
technique, and “the world” in its use of real objects and not representational
drawings’ (2006: 21).
Consideration of our embodied responses to movement is integral to
this line of enquiry. In his essay ‘Moving Away from the Index: Cinema
and the Impression of Reality’, Gunning works with the film theories of
André Bazin and Christian Metz to shift focus away from the photographic
index as a marker of realism and onto cinematic motion as a primary
impetus for embodied engagement or identification (2007: 38). He thus
introduces a theory of cinematic realism that makes room within film
studies for a consideration of animation’s ability to offer an ‘impression
of reality’ (2007: 45). Gunning stresses the important role that movementAPPROACHING ANIMATION AND ANIMATION STUDIES 13
plays in rendering animations and films ‘believable’ (2007: 45). He
accounts for the physiological appeal of many forms of animation (2007:
38) by examining how both recorded and animated movement engages
spectators’ bodies, evokes their ‘participation’ in the seen movement and
offers ‘a sense of perceptual richness or immediate involvement in the
image’ (2007: 42). These ideas help refine our understanding of what
is happening, for instance, when we become immersed in an animated
spectacle, As he points out, this interest in the physiological appeal of
animated motion is not new but was present in the writings of classical
film theorists such as Jean Epstein, Germaine Dulac and Sergei Eisenstein
(2007: 37). For instance, Eisenstein’s writings on Disney in the 1940s
demonstrate a fascination with the animated art form’s ability to
evoke certain synaesthetic, empathetic and ecstatic sensations through
watching images move in time. He describes his well-known notion of
‘plasmaticness’ ~ the temporal, metamorphosing elasticity of animated
bodies, objects and spaces - partly in terms of its profound effects on
spectators’ bodies (1988: 27).
‘There has been a somewhat limiting tendency in animation studies to
focus on spectatorial experiences of representational forms of animation
(eg. cartoon animation, narrative computer animation, and stop motion
puppet animation). This is in part because we are able to relate to figurative
types of animation and animated characters because they resemble aspects
of the real world enough for us to ‘project our somatic knowledge of the
world’ onto them so that they ‘can make “sense” to us’ (Bouldin 200
60-61). However, this theorization of animation spectatorship does not
apply as easily to forms of experimental animation whose primary aims
are not to represent or mimic aspects of reality (Buchan 2006: 21). For
instance, abstract animation often denies easy sensory ass n based on
recognizable bodies, spaces or states of affairs and calls for a distinct kind
of approach to sensory and cognitive intelligibility (Husbands 2018). Other
types of experimental animation present different perceptual and conceptual
challenges (see Taberham in this volume).
Thinking about what animation can do and the way it can make us feel
requires approaches that consider the radically different ways in which
animations engage the imagination and the body. They also highlight the fact
that the diversity of animation is one of its most prominent features and a
variety of interdisciplinary approaches are therefore needed in the field. The
differing ways in which animation might engage us raises some compelling,
questions about our preconceptions of what animation is, and how it has,
been discussed or defined, requiring us to continue to find new ways of
understanding it. As a thoroughly wide-ranging set of techniques, forms,
practices and aesthetics, animation deserves the multitudinous approaches
on which much of animation studies thrives.4 ‘THE ANIMATION STUDIES READER
Notes
1 Whereas much of film theory’s early enquiry coalesced around issues of
ontology, and in particular the unique relationship between film and reality
(see, for example, Bazin 1967), Animation Studies has lacked such a singular
theoretical enquiry. This is probably due to the fact that animation is not
‘indexical’ in the way that film is (ie. it lacks the direct causal relationship
between reality and image).
2 To the extent that this term has given title to Johnston and Thomas's (1981)
behind the scenes book about Disney animation as well as two books on
animation theory edited by Alan Cholodenko (1991 and 2007).
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