Animated Narrative Research Articles

Fenomenología de la narración audiovisual para la formación ética empleando el “anime”

Ethic formation faces the challenge of being understandable for students, but, aboveall, of being expressed in their own ways of understanding and discussing their lives, in orderto be relevant. One especially attractive form among children and young people is audiovisualcommunication, whose formative potential has been usually understood in instrumental terms,when not absolutely denied. This article presents a phenomenological proposal to dialogicallyelaborate in the classroom the problematization of duty centered ethics, as it is dramatized in twoJapanese animation productions (“anime”). In first place, it discusses phenomenologically howto understand the formative potential of the experience of watching an animated narrative. Insecond place, it claims that the phenomenological reinterpretation of the categorical imperativecan overcome its disconnection from the affective dimension of the ethical subject and his factualcontexts of action to focus on the caring of the human condition of vulnerability. In third place,it shows how the previous discussions are elaborated in two “anime”, which allow students toexperientially involve themselves in these ethical interpellations and offer teachers the opportunityto embrace their student’s insights in a dialogical learning experience understood narratively.It concludes summarizing the opportunities and challenges presented to teachers from thisperspective of the meaning of audiovisual creations in the education activity.

Women's Communication Strategies in the Barbie Film

This study, conducted in a sociolinguistic setting, looks into the communication strategies utilized by female characters in the animated film "Barbie and the Magic of Pegasus." It looks at how these characters' verbal choices reflect and maybe perpetuate gendered norms and expectations, building on Coates' theory of conversational strategies. The study uses a qualitative analysis minimal responses, tag questions, questions, hedges, commands and directives, swearing and taboo language, as well as compliments used by the female characters in the film. This improves comprehension of the complicated connections between children's stories, language, gender, and social interaction. The goal is to provide a deeper understanding of the communicative preferences exhibited by these characters. Looking at women's words can reveal a lot about how gender identities are constructed and transmitted in animated storytelling. This study not only enriches the sociolinguistic academic discourse but also prompts a profound reflection on the role of language in shaping social norms. By providing a nuanced perspective on the communicative strategies of female characters, this research invites critical engagement with the dynamics of language, gender, and social interactions within the realm of animated narratives. This allows us to think more deeply about societal communication in movies. The results of this study indicate that women show characteristics of a gentler communication style with the use of limited gentle responses, subtle tag questions, and limited application of compliments. This preference prioritizes inclusion and brevity of communication over other techniques such as instructions, hedging, and taboo language. Keywords: Coates Theory, Communication Strategies, Female Characters

Encouraging Eco-driving with Post-trip Visualized Storytelling: An Experiment Combining Eye-Tracking and a Driving Simulator

Air pollution contributes to global warming and climate change, leading to extreme weather events and rising sea levels. Promoting sustainable practices has become the focus of policy programs and awareness campaigns. In this study, we propose an effective and powerful way to promote eco-driving behaviors by drawing on data storytelling. Our study shows that animated narrative and narrative sequence can trigger varying emphases on the feasibility and desirability of eco-driving practices, affecting actual driving behaviors and attitudes toward efficient driving. Specifically, in two experiments, we find that a chronological narrative sequence with animation improves subsequent driving efficiency and efficient driving attitudes. Visualization designers may consider employing narrative sequence and animation to facilitate individuals’ information comprehension and behavioral changes. Policymakers can also encourage ecological practices through effective designs of data storytelling.

The Backstory to "Swaying the Public": A Design Chronicle of Election Forecast Visualizations.

A year ago, we submitted an IEEE VIS paper entitled "Swaying the Public? Impacts of Election Forecast Visualizations on Emotion, Trust, and Intention in the 2022 U.S. Midterms" [50], which was later bestowed with the honor of a best paper award. Yet, studying such a complex phenomenon required us to explore many more design paths than we could count, and certainly more than we could document in a single paper. This paper, then, is the unwritten prequel-the backstory. It chronicles our journey from a simple idea-to study visualizations for election forecasts-through obstacles such as developing meaningfully different, easy-to-understand forecast visualizations, crafting professional-looking forecasts, and grappling with how to study perceptions of the forecasts before, during, and after the 2022 U.S. midterm elections. This journey yielded a rich set of original knowledge. We formalized a design space for two-party election forecasts, navigating through dimensions like data transformations, visual channels, and types of animated narratives. Through qualitative evaluation of ten representative prototypes with 13 participants, we then identified six core insights into the interpretation of uncertainty visualizations in a U.S. election context. These insights informed our revisions to remove ambiguity in our visual encodings and to prepare a professional-looking forecasting website. As part of this story, we also distilled challenges faced and design lessons learned to inform both designers and practitioners. Ultimately, we hope our methodical approach could inspire others in the community to tackle the hard problems inherent to designing and evaluating visualizations for the general public.

Animated Life Writing

This paper proposes that the medium of animation enriches the narrative portrayal of lived experiences. Despite the rise in popularity of animation as a tool for storytelling on digital video sharing platforms, as of yet, little scholarship explores the impacts of animation on life writing narratives. In an encounter with animation production, I develop an original example of these animated narratives which I term animated life writing. Through the approaches of critical making and research in practice, by which I have created an accompanying animated video, the benefits and drawbacks of animation are explored with a particular focus on embodiment in life writing and the liveliness that is generated by cartoons.

Features of Culturalaesthetic Narratives of Chinese Hieroglyphics Animations

The purpose of the article is to identify the cultural and aesthetic narratives of animated Chinese characters and determine the directions of their development, as well as to identify the specifics of research on this topic and their integration into the global scientific context. The research methodology is determined by the specifics of the visual component and technological features of hieroglyphic animation works and is based on the application of the comparative and analytical method in combination with descriptive and formal analysis techniques. An important role in this work is given to the analysis and systematisation of scientific literature. The scientific novelty is determined by the analysis of the animated hieroglyph by studying a significant number of works in this area and by considering the Chinese scientific literature in comparison with the world literature in the field of kinetic typography. Conclusions. The Chinese character, as an important symbol of culture, is endowed with a wealth of connotations that allow for a sophisticated interpretation of their meaning and evolution with the help of the latest technologies. Therefore, in the practice of designers, the philosophy of hieroglyphic writing is transferred to digital media. The evolution of the hieroglyph can be traced in modern animation, especially in the creation of educational animation materials. Animation adds a time dimension to a static image and is presented in the form of a certain story, a narrative. It has been found that the creative searches of designers in this field are closely related to the poetry and polysemantics of the Chinese language and are directed to the depths of its history. In addition, some works of Chinese classical animation are closely related to the presence of hieroglyphic forms in animated narratives. The results of the study show that in the theoretical works of Chinese scholars, attention is focused on the preservation and promotion of Chinese culture, including in educational practice. There is also a concentration of technological research.

The effect of animated Sci-Fi characters' racial presentation on narrative engagement, wishful identification, and physical activity intention among children.

Characters play an integral role in animated narratives, but their visual racial presentation has received limited attention. A diverse group of U.S. children watched a 15-min physical activity-promoting animated Sci-Fi narrative. They were randomly assigned to one of three conditions, which varied the lead characters' racial presentation: realistic racially unambiguous (Original: White children, Black mother), realistic racially ambiguous (Ambiguous: All with brown skin without specified race/ethnicity), and fantastical racially ambiguous (Fantastical: All with brown skin with fantastical hair-and-eye color schemes). We assessed narrative engagement, wishful identification, and physical activity intention. Controlling for social desirability and multigroup ethnic identity, children who watched Fantastical characters showed significantly higher narrative engagement than those who watched Original characters, but they did not statistically differ from those who watched Ambiguous characters. Structural equation modeling indicated that narrative engagement and wishful identification fully mediated the racial representation effect (Fantastical vs. Original) on physical activity intention.

Retracted: Animation Narrative on Stress Relief and Psychological Cognitive Development in Adolescents.

[This retracts the article DOI: 10.1155/2022/1111488.].

Ancient for the Present: Analyzing Traditional Cultural Elements and Unique Modernity in Contemporary Animation Films

Entering the 21st century, as global cultures entered a new stage of intermingling, Chinese animation also rode the fast train of the times into a new stage of development, in which Chinese animation pushed the boundaries, from characterization to the cultural core of the story background, Chinese animation emerged as modernity culture wrapped in traditional Chinese culture, the two complement each other and together contribute to the narrative of storytelling expression. This paper takes a typical Chinese animated film between 2016-2023 as the object of study, and conducts theoretical research on Chinese traditional culture and the unique culture of modernity in animation narrative.

THE INFLUENCE OF USING SHORT STORY ANIMATION ON STUDENTS’ VOCABULARY MASTERY

This research purpose was to determine the influence of short story narrative text on students’ vocabulary mastery at the 10th grade of SMAN 1 PETIR. This research was done by true-experimental with random sampling. The population of this research was all of the first-grade high school students in Banten province, consisting of 350 students. The researcher used two classes, X MIPA 4 as the experimental and X MIPA 5 as the control class. Both classes consisted of 35 students. In obtaining the data, the researcher used multiple-choice questions as instruments. Try out was conducted as the first step to get the data. After conducting the tryout, the researcher gave a pre-test in both classes. The researcher gave the treatment in the experimental class using Short Story Animation as a media, and in the control class, the discussion method used a module. The result of the calculation by Independent T-test found that (0,002 < 0,005), which means the hypothesis alternative (Ha) is accepted. The effectiveness of using Short Story Animation Narrative Text can be seen in the ability obtained after the treatment.

The Search for Computer Science Concepts in Coding Animated Narratives: Tensions and Opportunities

Coding is increasingly popular in schools around the world and is often taught by non-specialist teachers as an integrated task with other subject areas. In this article, we explore the relationship between computer science (CS) concepts and students’ multimodal expression in a coding animated narrative (CAN) task in the context of an integrated English-Technology unit of learning. Through this collective case study, we explore how CS concepts underpin semiotic elements of an animated narrative, analyse the factors that influence the extent to which students exercise those concepts, and reveal the tensions and opportunities that a CAN task may present for learning computer science concepts in regular, non-specialist, cross-curricular classrooms. The findings suggest that CAN tasks are unique in presenting opportunities for students to learn challenging CS concepts such as synchronisation and parallelism. At the same time, CAN tasks present tensions for teaching CS concepts in non-specialist classrooms, where student projects are often judged on their visual qualities. In such settings, procedural, rather than conceptual knowledge, may be a more efficient route to creative outcomes. It also means that drawing skills need to be prioritised. Role specialisation often led to better quality projects but at the expense of individual students’ conceptual development in computer science.

Reflections on the Value of the Classroom: Animated Narratives about Student Engagement and Learning Under Lockdown at an International College in Thailand

Many in higher education are calling for a re-think of teaching and learning principles. The global pandemic de-stabilized foundational assumptions that guided pedagogy for many higher education practitioners. One such assumption is the value of the physical classroom for student engagement. Advances in educational technology and online learning practice have become immediately indispensable. And they have forced a reckoning for traditionalists. This qualitative narrative study examines the stories of undergraduates while studying online during the campus lockdown at a liberal arts college in Bangkok, Thailand. Their stories were produced into animated clips, which are featured in this article. They provide a uniquely vivid illustration of their learning engagement, as well as critical reflections on the value of the campus experience during a forced absence of it. While the study finds that students in some ways became more self-disciplined, it also reflects a refreshed awareness of the importance of ritual and shared physical space, in spite of the allure of educational technology.

Problem solved, but how? An exploratory study into students’ problem solving processes in creative coding tasks

Problem solving capabilities have often been reported by teachers as a key benefit from creative coding activities in school-age children. However, few studies to date have defined problem solving, and investigated how it is operationalised in interdisciplinary creative coding tasks. This study aims to build knowledge about students’ use of computational thinking and computer science concepts for problem solving when coding animated narratives. The research investigated students’ coding processes using data gathered from audio and device display recordings and semi-structured interviews. Results suggest limitations to the use of creative coding tasks if the expectation is to develop computational thinking and systematic problem solving strategies, or learn basic computer science concepts. They revealed that novice students rarely solved coding problems using optimal technically-based strategies despite being given explicit instruction on their use, opting instead to bypass problems by adjusting intended outcomes, or by using low level code translation strategies. Results demonstrate that engaging computational thinking or even demonstrating understanding of basic computer science concepts was not a requirement to produce a viable creative coding outcome. This study contributes new understanding of students’ coding practices when engaged in creative coding tasks in regular, non-specialist classrooms. Its findings challenge the commonly-held assumption that coding is a natural ‘vehicle’ to develop computational thinking and systematic approaches to problem solving. It also questions the learning that results from the non-technical, inefficient and often ineffective problem solving practices students employ during ‘creative coding’ tasks, that are frequently used by non-specialist teachers in response to curriculum requirements.

Non-Human Kids of Kiddie Lit: Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’s The Yearling and the Cultural Construction of Animal Narratives as Children’s Literature

This paper combines the perspectives of animal studies and reception theory to trace the audience shift of narratives foregrounding interactions between adolescent boys and animals published in the US in the first half of the twentieth century. More precisely, it argues that a text’s focus on human–animal bonds can result in its “kiddification,” a term explained by Beverly Lyon Clark as trivialization that leads to dismissal. We argue that the reasons for this shift include the solidification of the boy-and-his-dog convention in the 1940s as an example of formula fiction for juveniles, combined with the simultaneous proliferation of animal movies geared towards a family audience. The case under scrutiny is Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’s novel The Yearling and its film adaptation from 1946. Despite the book’s initial success among general audiences (awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1939), with time Kinnan Rawlings’s novel became “kiddified” and then passed into oblivion, rarely discussed by critics who deem it undeserving of attention and unread by contemporary juveniles, who perhaps find the book difficult, long and tedious (Groff, Harper’s, https://harpers.org/archive/2014/01/the-lost-yearling/, 2014). Consequently, the foregrounding of affective human–animal bonds in the book resulted in its later association with children’s literature, which was amplified by the film adaptation as well as the publisher’s marketing strategies.

Animation Narrative on Stress Relief and Psychological Cognitive Development in Adolescents.

As the atmosphere of domestic animation is getting stronger and stronger in recent years, its proportion in the process of public aesthetics, entertainment, and consumption is increasing; thus, the relationship between the audience and works has become an important academic focus. The theatrical animation in the animation industry has become the category that needs to be focused on and changed in the development process of domestic animation because of its characteristics of receiving attention from all-age audiences. Because of the diversified audience levels faced by theatrical animation, it is particularly difficult to coordinate the needs of each audience level, coupled with the long-term influence of Japanese and American animation; the trend of pop culture led by network culture; the inheritance, excavation, and reconstruction of national culture; and other cultural environment and creative thinking intertwined, making the construction of the independence of domestic animation appear more and more difficult. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the theoretical study of the healing elements of Natsume Yojimbo and to analyze the creation of Chinese traditional ink and wash in the creation of our own works. It is concluded that the thematic choices are based on two categories: emotions and dreams, which focus on personal life experience and universal concern for human life. The character construction is divided into three aspects: self-resistance and self-reflection, self-vision and self-actualization, and traumatic experience and self-rescue to explain the complexity and diversity of the characters' growth connotation. The narrative perspective constitutes the perspective from which the issues are viewed. The omniscient perspective allows for the coexistence of complex character relationships and a clear storyline, while the limited perspective reveals certain emotional tendencies. The narrative mode presents the moral of the text with cause-and-effect narrative, embellished group narrative, and dreamlike polyphony narrative. Finally, the article discusses the realistic dilemma of the growth narrative of domestic online animation and tries to put forward feasible development suggestions in response to the problems at this stage.

Compassion, Hunger and Animal Suffering: Scenes from Kerala, South India

ABSTRACT Animal narratives have not been a major part of the coronavirus pandemic other than to frame animals as “epidemic villains” whose relations with humans are either zoonotic or pathological. In this context, this article considers stories of compassion from Kerala, where activists and ordinary people started feeding stray dogs and other street animals during the state instituted lockdowns. State sanction and media coverage of feeding these hungry animals allowed them to be instated as part of a multispecies community in the pandemic, allowing them for the first time, legitimized access to food and water. Compassion was prescribed and validated on the basis of perceiving suffering synergistically or as mutually experienced during the pandemic. However, a linear history of compassion cannot be constructed as Kerala has an antagonistic relationship with street dogs framing them as violent free-ranging dogs that carry diseases and attack people. This article draws on insights gleaned from multispecies ethnography to explore the hidden everyday lives of the animals during the pandemic. It raises questions about how people come to occupy relations of care in societies where animal suffering is not acknowledged and explores the possibilities opened by the way compassion was constructed as a practical and moral value during the pandemic.

“For your future enjoyment”: managing intellectual property through franchise refurbishment

This article is interested in the ways franchises are managed through the retelling or expansion of the stories within them. Using Disney’s recent live-action versions of Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast as a case study, I outline the industrial utility of franchised textual expansion, arguing that many reboots and sequels and other modes of franchised proliferation serve to facilitate a process of franchise refurbishment – or an instance of rebranding and intellectual property upkeep. Specifically, I consider the way Disney has used live-action versions of their classic animated princess narratives to assuage culturally outdated gender politics often associated with these valuable pieces of intellectual property. Ultimately, I argue that refurbishment is both a textual and an industrial process – or a set of processes – that has evolved alongside the logics of modern media franchising to aid in the long-term management of intellectual properties.

The Intertwined Well-Being of Children and Non-Human Animals: An Analysis of Animal Control Reports Involving Children

The well-being of children and non-human animals (subsequently referred to as animals) is often intertwined. Communities are unlikely to be able to best protect humans from abuse and harm unless they are working to ensure the safety of animals who reside there as well. This study is the first to utilize U.S. animal control report data and narratives to explore how children are involved in cases of animal cruelty. Children engage in abusive acts toward animals, alone, or along with peers and/or adults. Children were found to inflict abuse most often with their hands or feet as opposed to with a weapon or other object. A total of 85% of animal cruelty perpetrated by children was toward a dog or cat. Key differences between how children are involved in acts of cruelty to companion animals compared with acts involving wild animals are described and warrant further study. The cases of animal abuse or neglect reported by children were among the most severe in the study, and often involved an adult perpetrator known to the child. Neighbors rarely report child abuse or intimate partner violence in the United States, but 89% of the animal cruelty cases involving children in this study were reported by a neighbor or passerby. Although children involved in reports as a perpetrator or reporter were most often in early adolescence, children involved in cross-reports between child welfare and animal control were often under the age of 5. Improved cross-reporting and stronger partnerships between human and animal welfare agencies may provide opportunity for earlier intervention and is likely to better many human and animal lives.

Poza antropocentryzm. Funkcje drugoosobowej zoonarracji w powieści Szczur Andrzeja Zaniewskiego

This paper presents a correlation between second-person narration and the more-than-hu­man perspectivity in animal narratives. The analysis focuses on representations of “you” nar­ration in Andrzej Zaniewski’s novel Rat, published for the first time in 1995. “Rat-centric” fiction, as Marco Caracciolo describes it, talks about various experiences of the title animal. Although the dominant diegetic form in the novel is the first-person narrative, the appearing parts of the text told from a second-person point of view turn out to be a significant element of a non-anthropocentric perspective. Considering the influence of form on the posthuman message, the paper is based on research in the field of animal studies and contemporary nar­ratology, including, among others, Irene Kacandes’s “literary performative”, David Herman’s “double deixis” or Dominique Lestel’s “thinking with fur”. In this article, I propose to dis­tinguish three functions of the second-person narrative in Rat: immersive, empathetic and identity roles. The immersive function participates in adapting a sensorimotor repertoire to the intersubjective perception of the non-human world. The second of them, the empathetic function, by bonding the human narratee with the animal character, opens a possibility of embodied co-experience and verification of anthropocentric norms. The third, identity func­tion, participates in (de)constructing the rat selfhood. Findings of the proposed perspective of second-person zoonarration sheds new light on its formal opportunities for creating post­human agency, thinking, and storytelling.

Constructing the pedagogy of multiliteracies. The role of focalisation in the development of critical analysis of multimodal narratives

This paper aims to contribute to the construction of multiliteracies pedagogy. We argue that the analysis of focalisation is an essential dimension in multiliteracies pedagogy aimed at promoting the development of critical analysis of multimodal narratives. Our point is sustained by a case study of focalisation in an animated narrative comprising a hybrid multimodal text offered for students learning about refugees in a public digital platform. We performed a critical analysis of the visual narrative supported by a grammar of focalisation in animated images and a framework for critical analysis of multimodal discourse. The analysis shows that viewers (and characters) are differently positioned throughout the text as uninvolved observers of the represented characters as ‘others’; as emphatic witnesses of the others’ suffering; and as committed social actors who see the refugees as ‘one of us’. We interpret these findings as conveying different ideological meanings associated with assimilatory or liberating ideologies. We discuss the major implications of our findings concerning the role of focalisation in the enactment of critical analysis of multimodal texts, the interdependence of critical analysis vis-à-vis the other learning processes as well as the need for teachers’ professional development as a pre-requisite to construct the pedagogy of multiliteracies.