How the Advancement of Computer Graphics has Improved the Representation of Monsters in Cinema

Monsters, creatures, and beasts have always been a part of any civilization’s culture. Through documentation and stories passed down from one generation to the other, we as a society have seen a huge variety of monsters in literature, arts, and movies. The correlation between society and its fascination with monsters stems from fear. Fear is the overall driving force for the creation of all monsters in every form of entertainment because of humanity’s attraction to the weird and abnormal. Often either a fear of science or a fear of one’s self, there is a monster that is created that corresponds. From Dracula to Godzilla, these monsters represent fear that were among the people of their time. Monster representation in film provides a surreal way to present those pure, exotic, and frightful themes in a way that the audience can appreciate. Computer generated effects have advanced significantly toward photo-realism, improving the impact of monsters in stories, folklore, and myths, portrayed in cinema.This thesis will discuss the origins of monsters; their impact on art, literature and early cinema; and how the visual effects industry reshaped and strengthened the representation of monsters in movies

Drawing from motion capture : developing visual languages of animation

The work presented in this thesis aims to explore novel approaches of combining motion capture with drawing and 3D animation. As the art form of animation matures, possibilities of hybrid techniques become more feasible, and crosses between traditional and digital media provide new opportunities for artistic expression. 3D computer animation is used for its keyframing and rendering advancements, that result in complex pipelines where different areas of technical and artistic specialists contribute to the end result. Motion capture is mostly used for realistic animation, more often than not for live-action filmmaking, as a visual effect. Realistic animated films depend on retargeting techniques, designed to preserve actors performances with a high degree of accuracy. In this thesis, we investigate alternative production methods that do not depend on retargeting, and provide animators with greater options for experimentation and expressivity. As motion capture data is a great source for naturalistic movements, we aim to combine it with interactive methods such as digital sculpting and 3D drawing. As drawing is predominately used in preproduction, in both the case of realistic animation and visual effects, we embed it instead to alternative production methods, where artists can benefit from improvisation and expression, while emerging in a three-dimensional environment. Additionally, we apply these alternative methods for the visual development of animation, where they become relevant for the creation of specific visual languages that can be used to articulate concrete ideas for storytelling in animation

Cat-People: An Ethnography of More-Than-Human Interrelatedness in the Cat Fancy

The practice of breeding and showing pedigree cats, termed the ‘cat fancy’, provides a novel lens through which to explore more-than-human intersections within leisure. Based on multispecies ethnographic fieldwork in the United Kingdom at cat shows and drawing on interviews with those who breed and exhibit cats, as well as judges and veterinarians, the thesis considers the relationships and sociality between humans and cats that form within the fancy. Going beyond a typically anthropocentric approach to leisure, it engages with feline subjectivities and asks, ‘what’s in it for the cats?’. This question is not one that seems to arise often in the consciousness of breeders or exhibitors. The cats themselves may benefit from specific standards of care, including health provisions and general daily needs. Yet, the thesis contends that the cat fancy involves serious compromises to the well-being and agency of the cat. The selective breeding of human-constructed cat breeds and the establishment of the cat fancy itself has restricted or removed feline agency. The processes and discourses disseminated and controlled by cat fancy institutions also represent an exercise of biopower, the overall aim being the ‘improvement’ of breeds and the preservation of ‘lineage’ and ‘pedigree’. The evaluative logic used within reproductive decision-making shares characteristics with eugenicism. The thesis does not deny that humans and cats form close intersubjective bonds in the cat fancy, indeed, such bonds are clearly in evidence. At the same time, however, multifarious, coinciding and conflicting relations and conceptualisations of cats emerge. Cats may simultaneously act as kin, companions, social conduits, status symbols, extensions of self, collaborators in cat fancy success or failure, lively commodities, and objects for aesthetic evaluation. The cat fancy also produces humans who self-define as ‘cat people’ and ‘ethical breeders’ with shared norms of care and attitudes towards cats. Overall, despite allowing the production of heterogeneous human-cat relations, the thesis argues that prevailing discourses, practices, and norms of care in the cat fancy result in the prioritisation of human needs

A representação emocional da personagem virtual no contexto da animação digital : do cinema de animação aos jogos digitais

Tese de doutoramento em Ciências da Comunicação (área de especialização em Comunicação Audiovisual)O fenómeno da proliferação de personagens virtuais nos mais variados contextos das indústria criativa e do entretenimento — especialmente no cinema de animação e nos jogos digitais — reflectem aspectos de uma cultura (audio)visual digital exigente de novas linguagens e emoções. Esta nova cultura da imagem espectacular e da animação computadorizada emergiu, a partir dos anos 70, diluída entre as fronteiras do filme capturado por uma câmara de vídeo, e das imagens animadas geradas por computador, desafiando os limites da imagem animada. O modo como a introdução destas novas técnicas e estilos se posiciona no processo criativo da produção clássica da animação de personagens, e se espalha pelos diversos objectos e conteúdos dos novos media, suscita novas prorrogativas, obrigando, como alguns autores sugerem, ao reposicionamento do estudo da animação. O uso do computador como um meio de novas possibilidades de criação traz à tona novas experiências emotivas e linguagens estilísticas. E é no campo da animação digital 3D que a mudança visual é mais significativa, surgindo regularmente inovadoras técnicas de manipulação da imagem com uma maior preocupação no desenvolvimento de personagens virtuais, em última instância, pivot e protagonista de múltiplas experiências visuais, comunicacionais e narrativas, sujeitas a um olhar de uma câmara que não conhece limites físicos. Esta imagem animada que nos possibilita um autêntico mergulho nos seus mais ínfimos detalhes, e resiliente o suficiente para ser partilhada por áreas como os jogos digitais e o cinema de animação, é um dos aspectos que nos leva a questionar acerca da dimensão da personagem virtual na contemporaneidade. Nesse sentido, a presente tese tem como objectivos centrais apontar hipóteses sobre os alicerces que levam à construção de uma “humanização” da personagem virtual, no sentido de uma representação credível de experiências reais como a tristeza, o ciúme, o medo, e outras emoções humanas. Para isso, o nosso estudo recaiu na análise de várias dimensões, modelos e aspectos clássicos da animação, com enfâse no contexto do desenvolvimento de personagens, procurando compará-los com os novos paradigmas definidos pelas novas rotinas do cinema de animação e jogos digitais. Com esta formulação foi necessário criar uma área transversal que abrangesse diversos campos de conhecimento, nomeadamente, o design de personagem, a interpretação teatral e, claro, a animação digital, palavras-chaves da nossa investigação. O resultado desta diligência permitiu encontrar novas características e mecanismos que tornam possível estabelecer um modelo de dimensões da personagem virtual com vista a uma experiência imersiva. Neste contexto, foi imprescindível proceder a um estudo aplicado para testar a veracidade das nossas conjecturas teóricas. Assim, procedemos ao desenvolvimento de uma personagem virtual e, posteriormente, à criação de um projecto interactivo, numa primeira fase, e uma curta-metragem de animação numa fase final. Ambas, a personagem e a curta metragem de animação, foram elaboradas tendo em vista os pressupostos resultantes da investigação teórica. Os resultados apresentados validam o nosso modelo dimensional demonstrando que, de facto, a credibilidade da animação de uma personagem virtual responde a um conjunto de prorrogativas que estão cada vez mais enraizados na arte e na indústria criativa.The proliferation of virtual characters in a broad range of contexts within the creative and entertainment industries — especially in animated films and digital games — reflects aspects of a digital (audio)visual culture that demands new creative languages and emotions. This new culture of extravagant images and computerised animation emerged in the 1970s as a confluence of the frontiers of film captured by a video camera and those of images generated on a computer, testing the very limits of the animated image. The way in which these new techniques and styles position themselves in the creative process for classic character animation and spread to a variety of subjects and content in new media requires new approaches and, indeed, as some authors suggest, a repositioning when it comes to animation studies. The use of the computer with its new creative possibilities brings to light new emotive experiences and stylistic methods of expression. The visual change is most noteworthy in the field of 3D digital animation, where innovative image manipulation techniques regularly emerge with a greater focus on developing virtual characters who, ultimately, serve as focal points and protagonists for multiple visual, communicational and narrative experiences, subject as they are to the gaze of a camera without physical limitations. This new animated image, which allows us to truly explore the most intricate details of the animated image and is resilient enough to be shared by a variety of fields such as digital games and animated films, is one of the aspects that brings us to question the role which the virtual character plays in contemporary society. Accordingly, this paper aims to develop hypotheses on the foundations that lead to the construction of a “humanisation” of virtual characters, which in this case refers to credible representations of real experiences such as sadness, jealousy, fear and other human emotions. To this end, our study analysed a range of classic dimensions, models and aspects of animation with an emphasis on character development in order to compare them to the new paradigms established by the new routines in animated films and digital games. This objective required the creation of a peripheral area that encompasses various fields of knowledge, namely, character design, theatrical interpretation and, of course, digital animation, all of which have served as keywords for our investigation. The result of this endeavour allowed us to discover new characteristics and mechanisms which made it possible to establish a theory of patterns and dimensions for virtual characters with an eye toward immersive experiences. In this context, it was absolutely necessary to proceed with an applied study to test the veracity of our theoretical conjectures. We therefore developed a virtual character and, later, an interactive project in the first stage and created a short animated film in the final stage. Both stages, the character and the short animated film, were developed with the predicted findings of the theoretical investigation in mind. The findings presented in this paper validate our dimensional model showing that, indeed, the credibility of the animation of a virtual character responds to new prerogatives that are constantly becoming more deeply rooted in art and the creative industries

Of Cigarettes, High Heels, and Other Interesting Things 3/E

Among species, human beings seem to be a peculiar lot. Why is it, for example, that certain members of the species routinely put their survival at risk by puffing on a small stick of nicotine? Why is it that some females of the species make locomotion difficult for themselves by donning high-heel footwear? Are there hidden or unconscious reasons behind such strange behaviors that seem to be so utterly counter-instinctual, so to speak? For no manifest biological reason, humanity has always searched, and continues to search, for a purpose to its life. Is it this search that has led it to engage in such bizarre behaviors as smoking and wearing high heels? And is it the reason behind humanity’s invention of myths, art, rituals, languages, mathematics, science, and all the other truly remarkable things that set it apart from all other species? Clearly, Homo sapiens appears to be unique in the fact that many of its behaviors are shaped by forces other than the instincts. The discipline that endeavors to understand these forces is known as semiotics. Relatively unknown in comparison to, say, philosophy or psychology, semiotics probes the human condition in its own peculiar way, by unraveling the meanings of the signs that undergird not only the wearing of high-heel shoes, but also the construction of words, paintings, sculptures, and the like

Worlds of Wonder: National Parks, Zoos, Disney, and the Genealogies of Wonder in U.S. Culture.

“Worlds of Wonder: National Parks, Zoos, Disney, and the Genealogies of Wonder in U.S. Culture” is an environmental cultural study that focuses on three institutional contexts and histories shaped by wonder rhetoric. These sites ground my articulation of three genealogies of wonder, based in (1) travel and the foundation of the U.S. national parks; (2) histories of scientific collecting and zoos; and (3) technological innovations and Disney attractions. Wonder, I argue, is not a conceptual given. It is a historically shaped emotion and discourse that has become a major discursive force for thinking about U.S. environments. Wonder has a distinctive history in the U.S., and I show that over the course of the nineteenth century, it was first used as a shifting signifier to describe a range of sights and experiences; it then became a codified rhetoric referring to particular kinds of landscapes and experiences that were, in turn, commodified through tourism. In tracing the codification of wonder and its institutional uses, “Worlds of Wonder” offers a cultural and literary analysis grounded in readings of a varied set of textual and visual media. Focusing on specific moments in institutional history, I analyze archival materials such as Northern Pacific Railway’s Wonderland guidebooks and advertising campaign; visual and textual rhetorical practices of travel narratives by Washington Irving, Alexis de Tocqueville, Frances Trollope, John Charles Fremont, Edwin Bryant, Samuel Bowles, Theodore Dreiser; and material sites, such as exhibits at zoos in Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland, San Diego, the Bronx, and theme park attractions such as Disney California Adventure’s “World of Color”. Each chapter examines wonder in the context of several interdisciplinary fields: chapter one locates wonder in environmental history and American literary and cultural studies; chapter two treats wonder and affect studies, animal studies, and zoo history; and chapter three contributes to Disney studies and technological histories. These interdisciplinary contexts ground my argument that national parks, zoos, and Disney theme parks create and deploy wonder discourses in the making of “experience economies” that produce collective wonder practices and define ways of participating in the nation, ecological worlds, and globalized corporate environments.PHDComparative LiteratureUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/110324/1/gcreedon_1.pd

Staying Alive: A Survival Manual for the Liberal Arts

Staying Alive: A Survival Manual for the Liberal Arts fiercely defends the liberal arts in and from an age of neoliberal capital and techno-corporatization run amok, arguing that the public university’s purpose is not vocational training, but rather the cultivation of “artfulness,” including the art of making knowledge. Humanist pedagogy and research use play and intersubjective exchange to foster forms of artfulness critical to the future of our species. From perception to reality-testing to concept-formation and logic, the arts and humanities teach us to see, hear and respond more keenly, and to imagine, or “model,” new futures and possibilities. Bringing together psychoanalysis, neuroscience, animal behavioral research, biology & evolutionary theory, and premodern literarature (from Virgil to Chaucer to Shakespeare), Fradenburg offers a bracing polemic against the technocrats of higher education and a vibrant new vision for the humanities as both living art and new life science. Contrary to recent polemics that simply urge the humanities to become more scientistic or technology-focused, to demonstrate their utility or even trophy their uselessness, Staying Alive does something remarkably different: it argues for the humanism of a new scientific paradigm based on complexity theory and holistic and ecological approaches to knowledge-making. It urges us to take the further step of realizing not only that we can promote and enhance neuroplastic connectivity and social-emotional cognition, but also that the humanities have always already been doing so. “Nature always exceeds itself in its expressivity” — which is to say that living is itself an art, and artfulness is necessary for living: for adaptation and innovation, for forging rich and varied relationships with other minds, bodies and things, and thus, for thriving — whether in the boardroom or the art gallery, the biology lab or the recording studio, the alley or the playground, the book or the dream

Our Mythical Hope

Classical Antiquity is a particularly important field in terms of “Hope studies” […]. For centuries, the ancient tradition, and classical mythology in particular, has been a common reference point for whole hosts of creators of culture, across many parts of the world, and with the new media and globalization only increasing its impact. Thus, in our research at this stage, we have decided to study how the authors of literary and audiovisual texts for youth make use of the ancient myths to support their young protagonists (and readers or viewers) in crucial moments of their existence, on their road into adulthood, and in those dark hours when it seems that life is about to shatter and fade away. However, if Hope is summoned in time, the crisis can be overcome and the protagonist grows stronger, with a powerful uplifting message for the public. […] Owing to this, we get a chance to remain true to our ideas, to keep faith in our dreams, and, when the decisive moment comes, to choose not hatred but love, not darkness but light. Katarzyna Marciniak, University of Warsaw, From the introductory chapte