Animation

This article discusses weightless kinetics of computer graphics animation by investigating its core mechanism and aesthetics through the practice of ‘keyframing’, that is, the generation of computer animation by setting ‘keyframes’. The author argues that it is the practice of keyframing that contributes most to the impression of a lack of gravity associated with computer graphics. More importantly, the method of deformation employed in keyframing inadvertently evokes rubber hose animation, the style popular in early animation. Rubbery movement was what struck Eisenstein as ‘plasmatic’ in Disney. Rubber hose animation resurfaced in the pioneering computer animation works by Peter Foldes, who explored free distortion and metamorphosis with the new automated movement. In the end, the technology of keyframe animation may be part of the teleology of labor rationalization, but it has come full circle back to where the animation industry began with rubber hose animation.

For decades, the notion of the creator’s absolute control over the drawn image has remained a staple of animation discourse, and the advent of computer animation has recently reinvigorated this discussion. The animated science fiction features Metropia (Tarik Saleh, 2009), Metropolis (Rintaro, 2001), and Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (Hironobu Sakaguchi and Motonori Sakakibara, 2001) engage utopian daydreams and articulate anxieties about the high degree of artistic mastery facilitated by advanced technology. Using these three films as case studies, this text examines computer-animated futuristic urban spaces as architectures of control. It discusses digital bodies as products of animators’ increased mastery over mimetic representations of the human form and explores the ways in which computer animation foregrounds its technological and artistic control over the image as a feat to marvel at. In doing so, this analysis highlights the evolution of the dream of the omnipotent creator into a fantasy of omnipotent machinery, while also foregrounding concerns about the possible danger of technology undermining animators’ labor and making it obsolete in the context of contemporary production practices.

This article discusses interpretations of environmental themes in the film Spirited Away (2011) directed by Miyazaki Hayao, including views that do not agree with any environment-related reading of the film’s contents. In analyzing this diversity of views obtained through fieldwork and secondary sources, the discussions involve interpretations of the characters and symbolisms related to the physical settings found in the animated feature. This includes: correlations with the Japanese economic fast-growth period in the Showa period from the 1960s onwards; contrasts between characters that are representations of pollution versus traditional symbols of nature; the inter-related ideas of consumption and waste; the delicate co-existence between nature and humans; traditional conceptions of nature; spirituality and interpretations of the environment; human–nature interactions; ideas about state and non-state stakeholders in Japanese society; the impact of economic production; changes in community bonds with development, etc. The methodology is based on textual analysis and interpretive work of scholarly arguments about ideas related to the environment in Japan. A second methodology is based on oral interviews with instructors and scholarly experts within the intellectual community who have experience in teaching or writing materials related to this topical matter. The concluding section discusses reception of the film and the way audiences cognitively react to and interact with the film’s contents to arrive at their own understanding (or rejection) of its environmental themes.

How does a director express his or her film style in animated films produced by a group? To address this issue, the authors analyzed the shot length of 22 Japanese animated films directed by Miyazaki Hayao, Oshii Mamoru, and Hosoda Mamoru. Their analysis reveals the statistical measurements of shot length were clearly dependent on directors. Miyazaki’s films show that he avoids both longish and brief shots, Oshii’s shot length is relatively long on average, while Hosoda prefers relatively short shot length. Furthermore, both Oshii’s and Hosoda’s first films deviated from their subsequent films in terms of statistical indices, suggesting that they established their style of shot length during their first or second time directing. The authors determine that all three directors controlled shot length primarily through their own storyboarding as a crucial process of determining the value, since the shot lengths correlated well with the designated shot lengths on the storyboards. In conclusion, the authors identified the distinctive shot length styles of the directors.

Adolfo Bioy Casares’ short novel The Invention of Morel (La invención de Morel, 2003[1940]) envisioned the wish of human beings to define themselves through technology, indeed to reanimate the human as a technological double in an environment that gradually becomes virtual. This article develops the relationships connecting The Invention of Morel with three animating forms – the phantasmagoria, the automaton, and the machine-environment – to stress the privileged association they make between invention and (re)animation. With this purpose, this article examines key contributions to our understanding of simulation and automata in the field of animation theory, such as Alan Cholodenko’s ‘Speculations on the animation automaton’, but also Joubert-Laurencin’s La lettre volante. Quatre essais sur le cinema d’animation, which directly addresses Bioy Casares’ story as a metaphor of animated cinema. Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytical approach to the field of aesthetics in ‘The Uncanny’, and subsequent theories like Masahiro Mori’s ‘The Uncanny Valley’, are also taken into consideration.