Coraline

Coraline (Henry Selick, 2009) is stop-motion studio LAIKA's feature-length debut based on the popular children's novel by British author Neil Gaiman. Heralding a revival in global interest in stop-motion animation, the film is both an international cultural phenomenon and a breakthrough moment in the technological evolution of the craft. This open access collection brings together an international group of practitioners and scholars to examine Coraline’s place in animation history and culture, dissect its politics, and unpack its role in the technological and aesthetic development of its medium. More broadly, it celebrates stop motion as a unique and enduring artform while embracing its capacity to evolve in response to cultural, political, and technological changes, as well as shifting critical and audience demands. Divided into three sections, this volume’s chapters situate Coraline within an interconnected network of historical, industrial, discursive, theoretical, and cultural contexts. They place the film in conversation with the medium’s aesthetic and technological history, broader global intellectual and political traditions, and questions of animation reception and spectatorship. In doing so, they invite recognition – and appreciation – of the fact that Coraline occupies many liminal spaces at once. It straddles the boundary between children’s entertainment and traditional ‘adult’ genres, such as horror and thriller. It complicates a seemingly straight(forward) depiction of normative family life with gestures of queer resistance. Finally, it marks a pivotal point in stop-motion animation’s digital turn. Following the film’s recent tenth anniversary, the time is right to revisit its production history, evaluate its cultural and industry impact, and celebrate its legacy as contemporary stop-motion cinema’s gifted child. As the first book-length academic study of this contemporary animation classic, this volume serves as an authoritative introduction and a primary reference on the film for scholars, students, practitioners, and animation fans. The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com

Plastic Glory

In ancient times, humans used drawing on walls as a way to express their emotions and thoughts. Then, cameras were invented to pursue that purpose through photos and videos in sharper images. And now we do animation, not just because it is pretty, but also because it is the tool that allows us to freely speak our minds, without being bothered by what we can and what we cannot do in film! There is a Lebanese thinker, poet, artist and writer named Jubran Khaleel Jubran, who has always inspired me with his artworks and specifically his poems. Mysteriously, there was something about his writings that I did not like so much. His thoughts were astonishing, but what made his thoughts less amazing to me was the fabulous poetic writing he descried his thoughts with. My feeling about his style eventually taught me that when we have strong ideas, simplicity in expressing them becomes the best vessel that delivers the thoughts, which leads to success. However, failure is certain when the ideas are too simple. Filmmakers should think big, plan bigger and act simple. I might have passed the simplicity line in my thesis, but I kept that idea of simplicity in my mind and I am sure it helped me making my film go as simple as possible, rather than ending up with a film that is impossible to accomplish. Plastic can mean either the material of toys or other objects, or the meaning of the word fake . The main story of Plastic Glory is about plastic soldiers who die for a glory that is fake . It is fake because it promises that soldiers die only when necessary, for the glory of their country. But what happens is that soldiers always die, unfortunately only for the glory of those who control them and, in the most cases, care more about getting promoted than choosing to keep their troops alive. The film is about plastic toy soldiers in battle, firing at each other, bombing each other in a way that mimics real battles and wars, only without blood, smoke or fire. Such an approach makes more room for the imagination of the audience where they can fill in what they do not see with what they know and perceive. It also makes the film appropriate for kids to watch, while safely passing the idea to them that war is merely a mean killing machine. And the most unfortunate victims of the violence that is delivered through the toy soldiers are the kids

The player character as performing object

Engagement in games is manifest through a player’s representation of action in game. The main mechanism for this engagement is through direct control of a player character. This control mechanism can be seen as a form of puppetry in which the player manipulates a game figure ranging from the abstract to the super-human. Through a focus on the player character, this paper posits that it may be productive to conceive of the player focus as one akin to that of the puppet artist, or puppeteer, and discusses one approach to unpacking the abstract sign systems of gameplay in this setting. The player character acts out the movements of the player and marks her progression in game. A doubling happens in this action, between the physical movements on the controller and the representation of agency on screen. As a player I act, then watch the results of my action on screen, always already audience to my own play practice. One ongoing challenge for games studies is the framing of the relationship between the player and her player character. From a phenomenological perspective this has been conceived of as an instrumental extension into the game world [9, 18]. Using the ‘binocular lens’ [19] of performance analysis semiotic work is necessary to balance our sense of the improvisational act of digital game-play. The player binds to the lived experience of game-play through engagement with the sign systems at play in a specific gaming experience. Puppetry has existed across world cultures, as entertainment, ritual and celebration, and broadly involves the animation of inanimate performing objects. The insertion of objects between the performer and the audience allows for different, and deeper, levels of signification than live actors alone can offer. Puppets consist a developed form of performing object, one that moves. The fascination with puppets reaches far back into history, revealing our yearning to play god, to exert domination over our human experience. Similarly, the seductive illusion of control plays a central part in the appeal inherent in digital game form. In the modern setting much work on puppetry remains relatively hidden across a broad spectrum of fields, from computer science to anthropology. However performance theorists such as Tillis [20] introduce a broad semiotics to conceive of the multitude of ways we engage with puppetry. Other theorists have engaged in embracing digital and mediated puppet form, not least in games studies in areas such as machinima and alternate-reality gaming, yet attention has been slow in broadening the application of puppet theory to player characters. Tillis [20] offers a focus on signs of design, movement and speech as core to building an aesthetic of the puppet. For the player character signifiers of affect and control require addition to any such tentative schema. This paper argues that the metaphor of the puppet offers a useful frame for the central figure of our game-play focus by allowing for a kind of ‘double-vision’ [20] that enables a player character to be seen in two ways at once, ‘as a perceived object and as an imagined life’ [20]. Using the tools of performance analysis this paper addresses the liminal relationship between player and player character in the flux of play. The intention is to offer an explication of the range of methods, whether stylistic, instrumental or kinesthetic, deployed in this relationship to engage the player in the act of play

Mr. Acephalous: The procedure of the individual stop-motion animation

Using the individual stop-motion animation Mr. Acephalous as a sample, this paper explores the change and restructuring of the commercial animation design and production process to create an individual stop-motion animation. Usually, commercial stop-motion animation involves a mature team, adequate funding, an enhanced production system, high-quality craftsmanship, and large-scale production space. However, in the individual stop-motion animation production explored in this paper, the animators are independent, usually students or film enthusiasts, who are not working with the manufacturing conditions of typical commercial animation. Utilizing the basis of commercial stop-motion animation, the author combined the process and experience of stop-motion to animate the film. This involved integrating the production process and production case used in commercial animation for a student in an individual, stop-motion animation. The paper studies the application of commercial design and production methods in a personal, stop-motion animation to accomplish a reasonable planning and production process. The filmmakers’ creation process and production of content are recorded in detail, beginning with the creation of the project’s concept to actual production. At the same time, this work deeply discusses the project’s academic and ideological development

Coraline

Coraline (Henry Selick, 2009) is stop-motion studio LAIKA's feature-length debut based on the popular children's novel by British author Neil Gaiman. Heralding a revival in global interest in stop-motion animation, the film is both an international cultural phenomenon and a breakthrough moment in the technological evolution of the craft. This open access collection brings together an international group of practitioners and scholars to examine Coraline’s place in animation history and culture, dissect its politics, and unpack its role in the technological and aesthetic development of its medium. More broadly, it celebrates stop motion as a unique and enduring artform while embracing its capacity to evolve in response to cultural, political, and technological changes, as well as shifting critical and audience demands. Divided into three sections, this volume’s chapters situate Coraline within an interconnected network of historical, industrial, discursive, theoretical, and cultural contexts. They place the film in conversation with the medium’s aesthetic and technological history, broader global intellectual and political traditions, and questions of animation reception and spectatorship. In doing so, they invite recognition – and appreciation – of the fact that Coraline occupies many liminal spaces at once. It straddles the boundary between children’s entertainment and traditional ‘adult’ genres, such as horror and thriller. It complicates a seemingly straight(forward) depiction of normative family life with gestures of queer resistance. Finally, it marks a pivotal point in stop-motion animation’s digital turn. Following the film’s recent tenth anniversary, the time is right to revisit its production history, evaluate its cultural and industry impact, and celebrate its legacy as contemporary stop-motion cinema’s gifted child. As the first book-length academic study of this contemporary animation classic, this volume serves as an authoritative introduction and a primary reference on the film for scholars, students, practitioners, and animation fans. The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com

Puppets between human, animal and machine: towards the modes of movement contesting the anthropocentric view of life in animation

In this PhD thesis, I challenge animation studies’ conventional notion that animation can bring something inanimate to “life”. This emphasis on animation’s capacity to make a figure appear to move on screen has led to the problematic notion that movement has a synonymous relationship with life. Contesting these discourses, I show in this thesis that not every animated figure suggests the impression of life. In order to prove this, I put forward as a critical focus the puppet-as-puppet figure, that is, the figure of a puppet depicted as a puppet per se in the film diegesis, which problematises the impression of life even if appearing to move on screen. A related focus in my thesis is the mode of movement which functions as a visual and physical parameter in order to analyse what an animated (or static) figure is intended to look like, instead of reducing it to a question of life. Through case studies of these puppet-as-puppet figures, which I classify into four groups, I examine the varying ways in which they are depicted as inanimate or sub/nonhuman, even when in human form, in contrast to human or (anthropomorphic) animal figures, both in terms of their mode of movement as well as their appearance. Examining how these depictions demonstrate anthropocentric views of puppets, I consider religio-philosophical, scientific and aesthetic discourses on puppets and human/animal simulacra. Further, I explore a selection of puppet-as-puppet figures as alternatives to these anthropocentric conventions, examining their defamiliarisation of the animating human subject’s mastery over the animated non/subhuman object, and the non-anthropocentric sensations which their movements arouse on screen in the relationship between humanity and materiality

Substitutive bodies and constructed actors: a practice-based investigation of animation as performance

The fundamental conceptualisation of what animation actually is has been changing in the face of material change to production and distribution methods since the introduction of digital technology. This re-conceptualisation has been contributed to by increasing artistic and academic interest in the field, such as the emergence of Animation Studies, a relatively new branch of academic enquiry that is establishing itself as a discipline. This research (documentation of live events and thesis) examines animation in the context of performance, rather than in terms of technology or material process. Its scope is neither to cover all possible types of animation nor to put forward a new ‘catch-all’ definition of animation, but rather to examine the site of performance in character animation and to propose animation as a form of performance. In elaborating this argument, each chapter is structured around the framing device of animation as a message that is encoded and produced, delivered and played back, then received and decoded. The PhD includes a portfolio of projects undertaken as part of the research process on which the text critically reflects. Due to their site-specific approach, these live events are documented through video and still images. The work represents an intertwining, interdisciplinary, post-animation praxis where theory and practice inform one another and test relationships between animation and performance to problematise a binary opposition between that which is live as opposed to that which is animated. It is contextualised by a review of historical practice and interviews with key contemporary practitioners whose work combines animation with an intermedial mixture of interaction design, fine art, dance and theatre

The Contribution of Shadow Puppet's Show through Engaging Social Communication in Modern Society

AbstractModern society experiences fewer opportunities concerning the arts and culture that benefits the community strength. The objective of this research is to promote and improve the quality of life in modern community through valuable storytelling by presenting the traditional shadow play in digital conversion of animation. The fundamental approaches for this research are to encourage sharing knowledge and stories about issues of life, which in reflective practice will strengthens togetherness and contribution on cultural environment among creative, and social outreach work practitioners. The outcome is a digital performance shadow puppet animation that narrates stories for a better understanding about life arises for the future's benefits

The Impossible Qualities Of Illusionary Spaces: Stop Motion Animation, Visual Effects And Metalepsis

This thesis examines stop motion animation, its role as a special effect and how the stop motion form impacts on narrative. In particular, it is concerned with the relationship between stop motion animation and the rhetorical concept of metalepsis, as well as the disruption and transgression of narrative spaces in fiction. The studio component of the work is an installation titled All The Nice Things Come From Here which uses an early film special effects technique, the Schüfftan process. The Schüfftan process is a form of in-camera compositing that uses mirrors to align two separate spaces to form the illusion of one cohesive space. The installation uses Newcastle’s light industrial landscape as a backdrop to create impossible miniature narrative spaces that can only be understood when the viewer is aligned to a station point forced by the placement of the mirrors. The theoretical portion of the thesis examines how this exploded view of an animated special effect can be used to explore ideas of narrative, narrative layers and the visual forms of stop motion animation. The thesis argues that object stop motion animation has aspects that are inherently metaleptic, as stop motion’s use of real objects doing impossible things creates its own subtle and impossible metaleptic spaces that simultaneously refer to both the world within the film and the world outside the film