The e-Volving Picturebook: Examining the Impact of New e-Media/Technologies On Its Form, Content and Function (And on the Child Reader)

The technology of the codex book and the habit of reading appear to be under attack currently for a variety of reasons explored in the Introduction of this Dissertation. One natural response to attack is a resulting effort to adapt in a bid to survive. Noël Carroll, leading American philosopher in the contemporary philosophy of art, touches on this concept in his discussion of the evolution of a new medium in his article, “Medium Specificity Arguments and Self-Consciously Invented Arts: Film, Video, and Photography,” from his Cambridge University Press 1996 text, Theorizing the Moving Image. Carroll proposes that any new medium undergoes phases of development (and I include new technology under that umbrella)). After examining Carroll’s theory this Dissertation attempts to apply it to the Children’s Picturebook Field, exploring the hypothesis that the published children’s narrative does evolve, has already evolved historically in response to other mediums/technologies, and is currently “e-volving” in response to emerging “e-media.” This discussion examines ways new media (particularly emerging e-media) affect the published children’s narrative form, content, and function (with primary focus on the picturebook form), and includes some examination of the response of the child reader to those changes. Chapter One explores the formation of the question, its value, and reviews available literature. Chapter Two compares the effects of an older sub-genre, the paper-engineered picturebook, with those of emerging e-picturebooks. Chapter Three compares the Twentieth Century Artist’s Book to picturebooks created by select past and current picturebook creators. Chapter Four first considers the shifting cultural mindset of Western Culture from a linear, word-based outlook to the non-linear, more visual approach fostered by the World Wide Web and supporting “screen” technologies; then identifies and examines current changes in form, content and function of the designed picturebooks that are developing “on the page” within the constraints of the codex book format. The Dissertation concludes with a review of Leonard Shlain’s 1998 text, The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image, using it as a departure point for final observations regarding unique strengths of the children’s picturebook as a learning tool for young children

Designing Children’s Interactive Pop-up Books: Creating enhanced experiences through the incorporation of animation principles and interactive design.

This thesis, Designing Children’s Interactive Pop-up Books: Creating enhanced experiences through the incorporation of animation principles and interactive design, created by Michael Begay, explores how interactive design and computer graphics can be used to create enhanced user experiences in children’s book design. Key factors taken into consideration during the creation of this thesis include children’s book design, typography, storytelling, animation principles, and interactive design principles. In order to explore the effect computer graphic design has on creating an enhanced user experience in pop-up book design, this project starts with research on writing a compelling, age appropriate story for children between the ages of three and six. After the story is complete, the next step of this project is the creation of a traditional printed pop-up book. This printed pop-up book is then used to inform design decisions around the creation of the interactive pop-up book, such as the types of interactions to use (e.g., pull tabs, drag and drops, and simple clicks) as well as how the pages animate. The interactive pop-up book uses full-screen display and sound to help further create an immersive environment and enhanced reading experience. After finishing the creation of the traditional printed pop-up book and the interactive pop-up book, both books are tested with a group of participants (consisting of parents, caretakers, older siblings, and teachers) who interact with children between the ages of three and six. The tests contain questions related to the story’s comprehensiveness, the overall aesthetic of the illustration style, ease of use, and format preference—printed versus digital. While the findings from these tests suggest that there is a still a wonderment for watching folder paper come to life in three-dimensional forms, the interactive pop-up book has more potential in creating an enhanced reading experience

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

Prepare to Pivot: Shifting from the projection surface to the Zoom screen necessitated by global pandemic

Design for theatre is an endeavor in which the physical, the corporeal, the defined, is applied to an ephemeral artform, one meant to happen only in the moment and then fade away. As such, building the world of the theatrical space, whether physical or digital, is similar to shooting at a moving target. While one angle of approach may be perfect for a moment, being ready and flexible enough to pivot, whether to reimagine due to limitation or to adjust an entire project due to calamity, like the shift from in person to online streaming. This paper investigates the joy of research, the growing pains of development, and then the labor of reshaping and rebuilding a projection design when the Covid-19 pandemic forced a rethinking of live performance. Chapter 1 explores the excitement that comes from diving into the exploration of first concepts of design, with the beginner’s mind engaged. Chapter 2 is a discussion of virtual filmmaking and how the game building software Unreal Engine is being utilized in the film world, as well as how these relate to theatre. Chapter 3 takes us on the ride of The Pivot as a pandemic forces changes in scripts and platforms. Chapter 4 deals with the balance of choices in design elements as they relate to projection in a live space versus the Zoom live stream, specifically, motion/stillness and geography building in a 2D platform. Finally, by maintaining a level of flexibility in design and approach, the pivot allows for new outcomes and unexpected discoveries

Collisions: drawing in the digital age

This research outlines the reconfiguration of the creative act of drawing through physical practice as a response to mass culture. This practice takes place in the context of developing digital technologies, culminating in metadrawing. Metadrawing is defined as the integration of the post-digital collapse of media specificity in the visual arts. This research posits metadrawing as a descriptor for the paradigm shift between the physical act of drawing in pre-digital mass culture and the principles of drawing incorporated into digital technologies. Through this shift, drawing has become an artistic act that is no longer working to collapse media divisions, and now operates within and without these divisions, destabilised by digital technologies. This research examines drawing as a history of innovations and responses to shifts in technologies and their applications. Questions of genre, form and medium are subsequently downplayed for an interdisciplinary approach. High and low are no longer distinct, as the internet search engine is adopted into the artist's toolbox, alongside the digital camera and animation software. The many accessible and disposable images are integrated as raw matter, to fossick and sift through. Accompanying studio research operates within the interdisciplinary freedoms of the metadrawing. Approaches to quotation, appropriation, pastiche, irony, detachment and sincerity are explored through a rigorous drawing practice, resulting in a vast, multilayered body of work. This self-reflexive and intuitive practice incorporates numerous ciphers into its many suspended, but interrelated narratives. Beyond the physical level, the work operates on an intertextual level, moving between the metaphysics of genre and previously separated art forms to create a reconfigured history, unhampered by previous distinctions and boundaries of media and form. This research posits the act of drawing as a reaction to, or divergence from, the dominant techno-capitalist status quo, treating the tactile experiences of studio practice as subversive, transgressive, and erotic. This research explores the subjectivity and the subjective agency of the artist. Drawing is therefore defined as a process of unrepeatability, a process that, while no longer necessary for picture making, still forms a crucial and engaging tier of the visual arts. Drawing’s divergence from the commercialised intangibility of the digital has revitalized its practitioners, demanding a reconsideration of what is means to draw today. This tension is explored through the different methods of studio practice, on the level of the personal-biological, the erotic, and in terms of collision and materiality. Specific images are selected through criteria directly linked with the subjective agency of the artist, and reconfigured through artistic practice, creating a new imbrication of the raw image matter

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

2D to 3D non photo realistic character transformation and morphing (computer animation)

This research concerns the transformation and morphing between a full body 2D and 3D animated character. This practice based research will examine both technical and aesthetic techniques for enhancing morphing of animated characters. Stylized character transformations from A to B and from B to A, where details like facial expression, body motion, texture are to be expressively transformed aesthetically in a narrated story. Currently it is hard to separate 2D and 3D animation in a mix media usage. If we analyse and breakdown these graphical components, we could actually find a distinction as to how these 2D and 3D element increase the information level and complexity of storytelling. However, if we analyse it from character animation perspective, instance transformation of a digital character from 2D to 3D is not possible without post production techniques, pre-define 3D information such as blend shape or complex geometry data and mathematic calculation. There are mainly two elements to this investigation. The primary element is the design system of such stylizes character in 2D and 3D. Currently many design systems (morphing software) are based on photo realistic artifacts such as Fanta Morph, Morph Buster, Morpheus, Fun Morph and etc. This investigation will focus on non photo realistic character morphing. In seeking to define the targeted non photo realistic, illustrated stylize 2D and 3D character, I am examining the advantages and disadvantages of a number of 2D illustrated characters in respect to 3D morphing. This investigation could also help to analyse the efficiency and limitation of such 2D and 3D non photo realistic character design and transformation where broader techniques will be explored. The secondary element is the theoretical investigation by relating how such artistic and technical morphing idea is being used in past and today films/games. In a narrated story contain character that acts upon a starting question or situation and reacts on the event. The gap between his aim and the result of his acting, the gap between his vision and his personality creates the dramatic tension. I intend to distinguish the possibility of identifying a transitional process of voice between narrator and morphing character, while also illustrating, through visual terminology, the varying fluctuations between two speaking agents. I intend to prove and insert sample demonstrating “morphing” is not just visually important but have direct impact on storytelling

A Model for the Development of a Popular Music Listening Curriculum

Secondary schools in Texas typically only offer performance-based ensembles to students as their music options. These classes require public performances, extracurricular time commitments, and financial obligations. Because of these and other issues, many students select non-music classes to fulfill their fine arts graduation requirements. Although it can be passive in nature, listening is how most people interact with music. Unfortunately, listening-based curricula are rarely available to secondary students. Where music appreciation classes are offered, the music studied is often outdated and unfamiliar to students. This qualitative study identified the pedagogical components present in an existing classical music listening curricula. These components were used as a model for the development of a lesson framework, allowing music educators to incorporate popular music into any secondary music class. Secondary music educators were given sample popular music listening lessons based on the framework developed and later interviewed to record their reactions