Computer-animated Film Research Articles

Walt’s Art History: Late Style, Digital Aesthetics and the ‘Disney Baroque’

This article examines the critical and cultural framing of the Walt Disney Studio’s cel- and computer-animated feature films according to an enduring art-historical narrative. It traces the critical evolution and historical periodization of Disney animation from the 1930s and 1940s to the post-millennial period, arguing that the studio has often been understood according to ‘early, middle and late’ phases of production that are typically held as both complementary and in tension with each other. Supported by the well-established art-history vernacular that has defined discrete Disney eras, this article then argues for post-2012 Disney Feature Animation as an example of the studio’s ‘late style’ – a later phase not of transgression or alienation, but one that adheres to a more positivist mode that signals pleasurable formal dissidence, confident deformation, and artistic creativity. This article subsequently advances the term ‘Disney Baroque’ to describe such playful transformations of digital aesthetics and effects present across the studio’s nine features released between Wreck-It Ralph (Rich Moore, 2012) and Encanto (Jared Bush and Byron Howard, 2021), its longest run of computer-animated films. By sharpening contemporary Disney’s connections to the ahistorical or atemporal logic of Baroque theatricality, this article identifies how contemporary Disney animation engineers spectacular moments of upheaval that rest on specific Neo-Baroque qualities (concealment, illusionism, representationalism, polycentricism, seriality, the labyrinthine) in ways that further contribute to an understanding of Disney’s own internal history and critical periodicity.

The Shape of Motion: Cinema and the Aesthetics of Movement by Jordan Schonig

Reviewed by: The Shape of Motion: Cinema and the Aesthetics of Movement by Jordan Schonig Philippe Bédard (bio) The Shape of Motion: Cinema and the Aesthetics of Movement by Jordan Schonig. Oxford University Press. 2021. 264 pages. $125.00 hardcover; $35.00 paper; also available in e-book. The Shape of Motion: Cinema and the Aesthetics of Movement, a first book by Jordan Schonig, is a unique and deeply engaging foray into some of cinema's numerous and often overlooked motion forms. By studying six different forms of cinematic motion, the book also, and importantly, presents a method for critically engaging with the movements in and of cinema. Significantly, Schonig proposes what we could call an alternative phenomenology of cinematographic movement, a way to "re-examine an aspect of cinema so fundamental that it rarely garners sustained theoretical attention."1 Throughout six chapters and a conclusion, Schonig consistently and convincingly highlights the fundamental strangeness of movement when it is imaged—that is, when it is framed (temporally and spatially) and made available for reviewing. Each chapter deals with a different kind of motion form, from the "wind in the trees" of early cinema to unusual camera movements to the novel effects of compression glitches. None of Schonig's examples are strictly limited to any particular period in film history, as he prioritizes tracing links between recognizable phenomena, regardless of their context or, for the most part, of their function within narrative films. [End Page 196] As Schonig illustrates in The Shape of Motion, even the unpredictable movement of fire, water, and smoke and the often overlooked subtleties of human movement can be "pinned down and pictured on film."2 This makes such phenomena available for aesthetic judgment, but it also transforms them. A persistent assumption throughout the book is that the simple fact of capturing and representing motion on-screen creates the conditions for an alternative engagement with movements we might encounter in our regular lives but which we might not be capable of witnessing. This stems from the fact that cinema allows us all to see the same images "through the same set of eyes."3 Although Schonig does not make the connection to Vivian Sobchack's description of the cinema's unique duality as "an act of seeing that makes itself seen," his account of our ability to see the seeing of movement through the cinema reaches the same conclusion.4 Put differently, cinema offers us a perception of movement once removed; already bracketed from our habitual modes of perception, cinema makes it possible for us to attend to movement phenomenologically. Chapter 1 illustrates this perfectly, as it deals with the "contingent motion" of smoke, water, and the wind in trees, both in early cinematographic experiments and in more recent computer-animated films with their ever more realistic particle effects.5 To explain what led audiences of early cinema and viewers of contemporary digital animation to enjoy the contingency of these natural phenomena, Schonig insists that these movements are not merely unplanned but unplannable. While Immanuel Kant may have judged these "formless" phenomena incompatible with judgments of beauty, Schonig insists on cinema's innate ability to give them form and thus make them available for aesthetic evaluation.6 Hence, whether we consider the wind's interaction with the leaves in the background of the Lumières' Repas de bébé (Baby's Dinner, 1895) or the elaborate particle effects of contemporary computer-generated imagery (CGI), the fundamental strangeness of cinematic motion is already felt in the fact that the image "frames" a moment and a movement that can therefore be reviewed. In this, cinema offers the capacity to reveal the intricacies of the movements we habitually perceive but to which we rarely pay attention. The second chapter's focus on cinema's revelation of the countless movements contained within the simplest "habitual gestures" serves as a continuation of Schonig's interest in the revelatory effect of cinema's imaging of movement.7 Here, the author turns his attention to the body and face of actors as yet another site for witnessing contingent motion.8 Schonig attentively [End Page 197] describes the emergence of the unexpected in the...

History at the end of the world: decolonial revisionism in Taika Waititi's Thor: Ragnarok

ABSTRACT From 19th-century novels to contemporary computer-animated adventure films, popular media culture provides no shortage of representations that subserve colonialist attitudes and perspectives. Thor: Ragnarok (2017) provides a rare decolonial fantasy, which is especially surprising given that it does so through the veneer of the big-budget superhero film. Registering a deep concern with public memory, the film spotlights and challenges the various uses of public memory in the maintenance of colonial legitimation. In doing so, Thor: Ragnarok offers an incisive and uncompromising indictment of colonization and colonialism, one that ends not with a call for reform but with the end of the world.

‘Who wants the pressure of being super all the time?’: Mid-century modern fashions and their influence on costume development in The Incredibles and Incredibles 2

In this article, we examine period fashions in character costumes in the two Pixar/Disney computer-animated films, The Incredibles and Incredibles 2. These films have a strong mid-century modern design influence interwoven into the films’ narratives and aesthetic designs. The films have previously raised interest in fashion studies, due to their superhero concept. However, an analysis of the characters’ everyday dress is also valuable for understanding the influence of fashion and pop culture references on contemporary animated film costuming and how those elements embed within the technological development of digital characters’ clothing. We employ historical and visual analysis to highlight the integration of design elements of period-appropriate fashions into character costumes. Additionally, we examine the relationship between animation software development and the films’ design aesthetics to inspect how technological advancements support the behaviour of cloth, narrative progression and characters’ personal emotional arcs by reviewing industry articles as well as animator and designer interviews from the making of the films. This is a unique case study that explores the influences and inspiration of period-specific fashion in constructing costumes for computer-animated films, which are ostensibly set in an environment also inspired by the period and specific cultural zeitgeist.

Humour for change? Melting ice and environmental fragility in the animated film comedies Ice Age: The Meltdown and Happy Feet Two

This article explores how environmental knowledge about global warming and the melting of ice is communicated through humour in the computer-animated films Ice Age: The Meltdown (2006) and Happy Feet Two (2011) and the educational role that ecocritical narratives can play. Bringing together approaches drawn from science communication, humour and animation studies, popular entertainment studies and the environmental humanities, we argue that both films communicate environmental fragility and awareness through comedy without ridiculing the seriousness of climate change, with humour serving to highlight the representation of climate change across both fictional and real-life contexts.

Semiotic Analysis of Moral Messages in Animated Film Raya and The Last Dragon

Raya and The Last Dragon is the latest computer-animated film from Walt Disney Pictures and Walt Disney Animation Studio. This animated film, directed by Don Hall and Carlos Lopez, tells the story of the adventures of a woman named Raya in saving the world. This journal article aims to analyze and describe the moral messages contained in the film Raya and The Last Dragon. This research uses qualitative methods, with Roland Barthes semiotics analysis approach, so that ultimately obtained the results of research on what moral messages contained in every dialogue spoken by each character such as moral messages about friendship, cooperation, responsibility, leadership, courage, unity, and most often appears in this film is the power of trust in each other to create unity without division.

Carefully Constructed Yet Curiously Real: How Major American Animation Studios Generate Empathy Through a Shared Style of Character Design

Contemporary computer-animated films by the major American animation studios Pixar, Disney and DreamWorks are often described as evoking (extremely) emotional responses from their ever-growing audiences. Following Murray Smith’s assertion that characters are central to comprehending audiences’ engagement with narratives in Engaging Characters: Fiction, Emotion, and the Cinema (1995), this article points to a specific style of characterization as a possible reason for the overwhelming emotional response to and great success of these films, exemplified in contemporary examples including Inside Out (Pete Docter and Ronnie del Carmen, 2015), Big Hero 6 (Don Hall and Chris Williams, 2014) and How to Train Your Dragon (Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois, 2010). Drawing on a variety of scholarly work including Stephen Prince’s ‘perceptual realism’, Scott McCloud’s model of ‘amplification through simplification’ and Masahiro Mori’s Uncanny Valley theory, this article will argue how a shared style of character design – defined as a paradoxical combination of lifelikeness and abstraction – plays a significant role in the empathetic potential of these films. This will result in the proposition of a new and reverse phenomenon to Mori’s Uncanny Valley, dubbed the Pixar Peak, where, as opposed to a steep drop, audiences reach a climactic height in empathy levels when presented with this specific type of characterization.

Parental Roles in “The Circle of Life” Representations of Parents and Parenting in Disney Animated Films from 1937 to 2017

With such an expansive global reach, greater research is needed to evaluate messaging within Disney animated films as it relates to societal implications. The present analysis examined the portrayal of parents and parenting over time through a census content analysis of 85 Disney animated and computer-animated films that aired from 1937 to 2017. The constructs of parent demographics, parental configurations, parent roles within and outside of the home, and parenting behaviors were examined. Results revealed that the vast majority of parents were viewed as mature, competent adults, with 56% use of the authoritative parenting style. Father figures were significantly more likely to use authoritarian and permissive parental approaches whereas female caregivers were more authoritative. Although parents were portrayed as overall mature and competent adults, implications are discussed regarding the portrayal of parental approaches that do not provide children with the support needed to overcome obstacles.

Peri-implantitis and its prevention.

This perspective article on peri-implantitis and its prevention was produced as a supplement to a 3-D, computer-animated film aiming at presenting key characteristics of peri-implant health, the build-up of a biofilm and the ensuing host-response resulting in peri-implant mucositis and, subsequently, peri-implantitis. Treatment concepts for peri-implantitis were briefly reviewed, and prevention of the condition was brought to attention as a priority in implant dentistry. The overview also highlighted the 2017 World Workshop on Classification of Periodontal and Peri-implant diseases and Conditions, in which new disease definitions and case definitions were presented for peri-implant health, peri-implant mucositis, and peri-implantitis.

A critical review analysis about the movie <i>Ratatouille</i> and its impact on culinary tourism

The aim of the present exploratory research is to critically analyse the reviews provided by the viewers about the movie Ratatouille and its impact on culinary tourism. The movie Ratatouille was an US computer-animated comedy film. The film created several feelings on the minds of the viewers. The feelings such as the desire to try the famous preparation 'Ratatouille' and an inspiration to cook. Theory of planned behaviour (TPB) was developed by Icek Ajzen (1988, 1991). The theory predicts the intention/behaviour of the people. Based on TPB framework, convenience sampling was adopted to collect reviews about the movie Ratatouille. The collected reviews were systematically coded. The findings of the study indicate that the movie Ratatouille predominately created positive impression in the viewer's minds.

‘I’m Not a Real Boy, I’m a Puppet’: Computer-Animated Films and Anthropomorphic Subjectivity

This article rethinks anthropomorphic representation and animated animality within the context of the contemporary digital era and, more precisely, against the rise of the computer-animated feature film. By interrogating the fractured identity of the anthropomorph as a necessarily hybrid figuration, it suggests how popular computer-animated films have rejected ánthrōpos and instead exploited the non-human morphē element to manipulate virtual space through anthropomorphic subjectivity. The anthropomorph is here refined into a more prescriptive and functional agent, absorbing viewers into a spectatorial game that sharpens their awareness of the digital realm. Films such as Ratatouille (Brad Bird, 2007) and Bee Movie (Simon J Smith and Steve Hickner, 2007) are offered as case studies that reflect the shift towards the form or morphē element, one that is registered through a particular mode of subjectified address. Drawing on Gilles Deleuze’s notion of ‘gaseous perception’ to elucidate this delivery of enlivened space, this article argues that the computer-animated film is implicated in a hierarchical switch away from humanlike behaviour to embrace the possibilities of the anthropomorph’s non-human morphē identity, thereby upturning the received narrative of how anthropomorphism has been conceptualized among critical studies of animation.

Testing the ‘uncanny valley’ hypothesis in semirealistic computer-animated film characters: An empirical evaluation of natural film stimuli

The uncanny valley (UV) hypothesis, which predicts that almost but not fully humanlike artificial characters elicit negative evaluations, has become increasingly influential. At the same time, the hypothesis has become associated with many computer-animated films that have aimed at high realism. In the present investigation, we tested whether semirealistic animated film characters do in fact elicit negative evaluations. Fifty-four participants were asked to evaluate five matched film excerpts from each of cartoonish, semirealistic, and human-acted films. Mixed model analyses were conducted to reduce the effects of participant and stimulus related confounds. Explicit selections made after the experiment confirmed that participants associated semirealistic film characters correctly with the UV. Semirealistic animated characters also received higher eeriness ratings than the other film characters. In particular, two semirealistic films ‘Beowulf’ and ‘The Polar Express’ were selected the most often explicitly, and ‘Beowulf’ also received higher eeriness ratings than any other film. Somewhat unexpectedly, cartoonish characters received the highest strangeness ratings and (after confound correction) the lowest likability ratings. Taken together, the present findings demonstrate that semirealistic animated film characters are more eerie than cartoonish characters or real actors, and hence provide evidence for the existence of the UV in animated film characters.

Notes on a Luxo world

Abstract The impact of digital technologies upon contemporary film-making practice has given rise to a range of fictional film worlds to which the label ‘computer-animated’ might legitimately be applied. But the evident rejuvenation of cinema’s fictional worldhood at the hands of technological advancement are demands that can only be met by a fresh approach to understanding how the digital crafts its unique screen worlds. This article advances the term ‘Luxo’ as a useful descriptor that awards both shape and definition to the specific fictional worlds of the computer-animated feature film. Historically bound to the development of computeranimated film-making within a US context and the release of Pixar Animation Studios’ Luxo Jr. (Lasseter, 1986), this article negotiates the term as a way of examining the intrinsic cause and effect relationship between these worlds’ origins on a computer screen and their arresting, animated activity. By applying the affiliated concept of animatedness to divulge how the animators’ digital thumbprint enunciates the status of Luxo worlds as animation, this article allies the particular industrial considerations with specific textual features involved in the computer-animated film’s fictional world construction.

Emotion capture

The customary practice across both feature-length cel-animated cartoons and television animation has been to cast adults in the vocal roles of children. While these concerns raise broader questions about the performance of children and childhood in animation, in this article I seek to examine the tendency within computer-animated films to cast children-as-children. These films, I argue, offer the pleasures of “captured” performance, and foreground what Roland Barthes terms the “grain” of the child’s voice. By examining the meaningless “babbling” and spontaneous vocalisations of the aptly-named child Boo from Pixar’s Monsters, Inc. (2001), this article offers new ways of conceptualising the relationship between animation and voiceover, suggesting that computer-animated films celebrate childhood by emphasising the verbal mannerisms and vicissitudes of the unprompted child actor. The calculated fit between the digital children onscreen and the rhythms of their unrefined speech expresses an active engagement with the pleasures of simply being young, rather than privileging growing up. Monsters, Inc. deliberately accentuates how the character’s screen voice is authentically made by a child-as-a-child, preserving the unique vocal capabilities of four-year-old Mary Gibbs as Boo, whilst framing her performance in a narrative which dramatises the powers held within the voice of children.

Procedural Modeling of Interconnected Structures

AbstractThe complexity and detail of geometric scenes that are used in today's computer animated films and interactive games have reached a level where the manual creation by traditional 3D modeling tools has become infeasible. This is why procedural modeling concepts have been developed which generate highly complex 3D models by automatically executing a set of formal construction rules. Well‐known examples are variants of L‐systems which describe the bottom‐up growth process of plants and shape grammars which define architectural buildings by decomposing blocks in a top‐down fashion. However, none of these approaches allows for the easy generation of interconnected structures such as bridges or roller coasters where a functional interaction between rigid and deformable parts of an object is needed. Our approach mainly relies on the top‐down decomposition principle of shape grammars to create an arbitrarily complex but well structured layout. During this process, potential attaching points are collected in containers which represent the set of candidates to establish interconnections. Our grammar then uses either abstract connection patterns or geometric queries to determine elements in those containers that are to be connected. The two different types of connections that our system supports are rigid object chains and deformable beams. The former type is constructed by inverse kinematics, the latter by spline interpolation. We demonstrate the descriptive power of our grammar by example models of bridges, roller coasters, and wall‐mounted catenaries.

The Evolving 'Temp Score' in Animation

'Temp music' has long been used to assist in the making of Hollywood motion pictures. Animated feature films, in particular, often spend years in production, going through a protracted process of development, storyboarding, animation, lighting, shading, editing and revisions. Unlike live-action film, today's computer-animated film is also edited as it is being developed, written and conceived. Hence, the 'temp score' changes, evolves and is 'conformed' as sequences are further edited and altered following reviews, screenings, rewrites, picture changes and new animation. Over several years, the temp score evolves along with the film. The evolution of the temp score, while being a hidden, unglorified part of the filmmaking process, is ideally situated to impact upon debates concerning authorship, originality, auteur theory, collaborative processes and intertextuality. Drawing on the author's notes and discussions with filmmakers, this article provides a glimpse into the internal process of temp scoring in c...

The Politics of Media in Stan Vanderbeek's Poemfields

This article provides a context for understanding the series of computer-animated films — Poemfields — that Vanderbeek made at Bell Labs between 1966 and 1969, using the first moving image programming language, Bflix, invented by Bell computer scientist, Ken Knowlton. Through an analysis of these works, the author shows how Vanderbeek's politics were deeply and consciously socialist in orientation, how he aimed at nothing less than changing social consciousness through a radical conception of the then emerging information and communication technologies, and how computerized animation as it was emerging at that moment was central to both of these aims.

Ringtailed Lemurs: Behavioral Ecology and Biology

Ringtailed lemurs are truly the flagship species for Madagascar, given their recognizable features and a role as “King of the Lemurs” in a computer-animated film produced by DreamWorks Animation. Shortly before Ringtailed Lemur Biology was published, students conducting a primary school science project contacted me for information on population sizes of these amazing primates. I was embarrassed to admit that no such data existed at that time, despite the wealth of information on lemur behavior. The nascent primatologists were not impressed, given that their classmates had “tons of cool stuff” on other tropical mammals. In the future, I can point interested students to this book as the perfect place to get “cool stuff” on ringtailed lemurs. The book is organized into four sections: distribution, feeding and ranging, social behavior, and health and disease. The distribution section contains four chapters, two of which provide short overviews of the main sites where detailed field studies have been conducted. The other chapters in this section really shine. The first paper by Goodman et al. describes the biogeography of ringtailed lemurs, illustrating the ability of this species to survive in a variety of habitat types. The second paper by Sussman et al. integrates abundance patterns of ringtailed lemurs with satellite analysis of forest cover. The authors do a commendable job of interpreting their model. They also point out how omission and commission errors are serious issues in conservation models. By uniting data from an old discipline (biogeography) with a very new discipline (satellite imagery), Sussman et al. highlight the value of landscape approaches for studies of the conservation biology of mammals. This paper is a ‘must read’ for primatologists and mammologists pursuing similar work. The second section on feeding and ranging behaviors contains seven chapters, each of which highlights the importance of tamarind trees (Tamarindus indica) as a keystone resource for ringtailed lemurs. Soma’s chapter on exploitation of exotic food resources and the resulting population growth has important implications for lemur health, a topic explored in detail later in the book. The take-home message in this section is that if there are no tamarind trees, then J Mammal Evol (2008) 15:151–153 DOI 10.1007/s10914-007-9061-7

Deviation / Red vs. Blue: The Blood Gulch Chronicles

ABSTRACT Machinima are computer-animated films shot within video games that expose possibilities and pitfalls in the increasing convergence of cinema and video games. By satirically dramatizing the inner lives of video game characters, machinima works Deviation and Red vs. Blue undermine the cycle of combat and death that drives first-person shooters.

The Teacher and the Taught: Structures and Meaning in the Arabian Nights and the Panchatantra

The Arabian Nights and the Panchatantra are both works of Asian origin, and both have exercised their power over and literary imagination across continents for many centuries. The Panchatantra has been considered to be the older of the two, and it is supposed to have influenced the Nights, yet the narratives about the origin of each of these works do not supply clear evidence. Both of them exist in more than one version, and both have become popular in modern times by way of their translations into European languages. Through the ages, in telling and retelling, in translations and annotations, versions of the stories have emerged and become the subject of many scholarly works. For a folklorist scholar today, the widespread distribution and popular reception of the two works present a particular situation for research. The Arabian Nights continues to be an extremely popular work and is presented in the newest media, including, most recently, computer-animated films and video games. The Panchatantra's genre is classified as fable, and accordingly it appears most prominently in various forms of children's literature. At the academic level, constant and valuable research on the process of how the two works came into being, has revealed how they were molded and in a continuous process lasting for many centuries. And yet, though the existing research is quite exhaustive, numerous details of their history and character, particularly of the Arabian Nights, remain to be studied (Marzolph 19). A modern folklorist is faced with this contrast between the popular renown and the academic conclusions about the Nights. If this essay, then, proposes to analyze the ending of the Nights, on which version should this analysis be based: on the famous but highly constructed one, like Richard Burton's, or on others regarded as closer to native or authentic versions? Considering the intense discussion on the subject of the construction of the Nights, none of the versions retains credibility. I see this as the particular situation of research today when we are aware of the materials as they have emerged in the process of modernity and textualizing. With reference to the textualization of Asian works into European languages during the past five centuries, it is worth noting that the so-called have acquired an identity that has its own authenticity, such as an identity across national boundaries. Galland's Mille et une Nuits or Burton's Nights, for example, are known to millions of readers across the world as The Thousand and One Nights or the Arabian Nights. The constructs exist and cannot be wished away. More important, they need to be treated as materials of a very special kind. Indeed, the process of textualization of oral narratives is often complex and varied. Each textualized narrative is a version, and there are often various textualized versions prepared from different sources, which is exactly the situation in the case of the Arabian Nights. How, then, should these different textualizations be treated for interpretative and analytical studies? I think that they present a situation similar to the one offered by oral variants. Global The various European versions of the Arabian Nights, based on different manuscripts, may be seen as different textualized versions. At the same time, our academic understanding of the Arabian Nights as a Western construct should not prevent us from acknowledging their folkloric identity. If the constructs have become internationally renowned versions, then their analysis refers probably less to their contexts and more to their acquired international meaning. At a more specific level, the process of the emergence of European constructs of Asian folklore and their travel across continents is intrinsically related to the geography of the colonial world. Folklore from different parts of the world traveled to various other parts in the languages of the colonial rulers with an unprecedented speed. …