Whoever Said Change Was Good: The Transforming Body of the Disney Villainess

This dissertation examines female figures in Disney animation through the lens of Laban Movement Analysis (LMA), a system for observing and articulating movement qualities. Drawing from six major films released between 1937 and 2010, I focus my inquiry on how the bodies and movement of Disneys villainesses reflect and/or perpetuate cultural imaginaries of women. I identify the influence of several cultural tropes of femininity, including fairy-tale archetypes, ballet conventions, and the Hollywood femme fatale, and explore how they constellate social understandings of age, beauty, and desirability. Coalescing around the theme of physical transformation, the study investigates how consistent movement patterns both support character animation and reflect gender ideologies encoded in the bodies of these wicked women. Through a methodology grounded in LMA and drawing from dance studies, feminist theory, and Disney scholarship, I interrogate popular conceptions of women and evil, articulate how movement contributes to cultural meaning, and demonstrate LMAs value to cultural analysis and animation

Representation and Participation in Anime

Anime, also known as animation, is a style of Japanese film and television animation, typically aimed at adults, as well as children. One of the popular uses for anime—aside from entertainment—is its potential to create powerful messages and address social issues. Despite its huge popularity among diverse audiences, anime is almost entirely devoid of Black and Hispanic characters, as well as social justice themes. After examining the literature, I attempt to provide a model for how a person of one ethnicity can create an authentic character of a different ethnicity, by presenting my character, Ninurai. As a Black artist, I show the stages of character development and share reflections as I work toward accurate representation of an Asian phenotype. This work serves as a model for art educators interested in character development and racial representation

"Disney is the Tiffany’s and I am the Woolworth's of the business": A critical re-analysis of the business philosophies, production values and studio practices of animator-producer Paul Houlton Terry

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.Animator-producer Paul Houlton Terry has been portrayed as having little passion for the animation he produced and being more concerned with making a profit than producing entertaining cartoons with high production values. The purpose of the dissertation is to re-evaluate Terry‘s legacy to animated cartooning by analyzing his business philosophies, production values, and studio practices. Application of four psychodynamic factors to the early life and career of Terry, 1887-1929, found that his economic decision making was characterized by: an external locus of control, risk-averse financial behaviour, extreme saving behaviour through precaution, and shrewd money management practices. Based on Terry‘s historical responses to twelve major economic, technological, or institutional forces of change for the period 1929-1955, the psychodynamic factors were found to provide accurate explanations for his studio practices and production decisions. There was no evidence to support the conclusion that three early career disappointments undermined Terry‘s intrinsic motivation to create animated cartoons. Rather, Terry‘s lack of risk taking, external locus of control, tight studio production schedule, desire to compete with neighbour studio Fleischer, difficulty in separating financial rewards from creative processes in animation, and practice of undertaking surveillance measures on staff may have undermined his and his studio‘s creativity. Archival research found Terry to possess strong passions for and to have made significant creative contributions to the field of animation. Biographical research found that Terry retained a stable nucleus of highly talented artists who dedicated a significant portion of their working careers to the studio. An analysis of the cel aesthetics of a random sample of animated cartoons produced during the years 1930-1955 found that Terry created animated cartoons with above average cel aesthetics when compared to the other studios thereby supporting an inference that Terry was motivated to producing quality crafted animation. Further research is suggested into the role psychodynamic factors and economic decision-making play in the film production process and a clarification of Terry‘s legacy to the field of animated cartoons

A Novel Approach to Equating English Teachers’ and Chinese Teachers’ Ratings of Behaviours Characterised by Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

The diagnosis and treatment of ADHD rely on accurately identifying and interpreting symptoms. However, different raters may have different perceptions of ADHD symptoms, which can significantly impact ADHD diagnosis and prevalence rates. This study presented a novel way to compare ADHD symptom ratings between children from China and England while considering raters' differences. The study developed a series of cartoon animations to measure the raters' leniency toward Children’s ADHD symptoms. The Many-facet Rasch Model was then applied to adjust the children's ADHD symptom ratings according to their raters' leniency. The study was conducted in Year 2 classrooms in schools in China and England, and participating teachers were asked to rate cartoon characters' ADHD behaviours according to their tolerance. They were also asked to rate 10 children selected randomly from their class about ADHD symptoms. The study found that Chinese teachers were more lenient with children's ADHD behaviours than their English colleagues. Moreover, after adjusting for raters' leniency, Chinese children's ratings increased significantly, while English children's ratings decreased significantly. The study also found that Chinese children's ratings of ADHD behaviours were significantly higher than those of English children. Additionally, the Inter-rater Agreement was low among Chinese teachers. The findings highlight the significant impact of raters' differences on ADHD symptom ratings and the importance of equating teachers' ratings of children's ADHD symptoms to produce a relatively fair comparison between countries. The study's use of cartoon animations offers many advantages over text and videotape vignettes for cross-cultural studies. Moreover, the findings suggest that multi-informants are necessary for a single setting for diagnosing ADHD in children. In conclusion, this study provides valuable insights into the impact of rater differences on ADHD symptom ratings and the importance of considering these differences when comparing prevalence rates between countries. Future research should explore ways to improve inter-rater agreement among raters and investigate other factors that may affect ADHD diagnosis and treatment

Animating Film Theory

Animating Film Theory provides an enriched understanding of the relationship between two of the most unwieldy and unstable organizing concepts in cinema and media studies: animation and film theory. For the most part, animation has been excluded from the purview of film theory. The contributors to this collection consider the reasons for this marginalization while also bringing attention to key historical contributions across a wide range of animation practices, geographic and linguistic terrains, and historical periods. They delve deep into questions of how animation might best be understood, as well as how it relates to concepts such as the still, the moving image, the frame, animism, and utopia. The contributors take on the kinds of theoretical questions that have remained underexplored because, as Karen Beckman argues, scholars of cinema and media studies have allowed themselves to be constrained by too narrow a sense of what cinema is. This collection reanimates and expands film studies by taking the concept of animation seriously. Contributors. Karen Beckman, Suzanne Buchan, Scott Bukatman, Alan Cholodenko, Yuriko Furuhata, Alexander R. Galloway, Oliver Gaycken, Bishnupriya Ghosh, Tom Gunning, Andrew R. Johnston, Hervé Joubert-Laurencin, Gertrud Koch, Thomas LaMarre, Christopher P. Lehman, Esther Leslie, John MacKay, Mihaela Mihailova, Marc Steinberg, Tess Takahash

Pirate Story

What is children’s cinema? This thesis explores this question by identifying three codes of children’s film and illuminating them through a short film entitled “Pirate Story.” The film is about a boy and his grandfather, and the pirates that inhabit a bedtime story. The pirates compete with the grandfather to have narrative authority over their own existence. This film examines the role of the narrator, use of animation, and absence of the parental figures as elements that are signifiers of children’s cinema. It was shot on HD video, with animation created in After Effects. Production also involved creation of a life-size pirate ship set, costumes, and musical score. This film serves to show that children’s cinema contains unique codes that inform the audience’s viewing experience and are important in the development of spectatorship into adulthood

The Stretch-Engine: A Method for Creating Exaggeration in Animation Through Squash and Stretch

Animators exaggerate character motion to emphasize personality and actions. Exaggeration is expressed by pushing a character’s pose, changing the action’s timing, or by changing a character’s form. This last method, referred to as squash and stretch, creates the most noticeable change in exaggeration. However, without practice, squash and stretch can adversely affect the animation. This work introduces a method to create exaggeration in motion by focusing solely on squash and stretch to control changes in a character’s form. It does this by displaying a limbs' path of motion and altering the shape of that path to create a change in the limb’s form. This paper provides information on tools that exist to create animation and exaggeration, then discusses the functionality and effectiveness of these tools and how they influenced the design of the Stretch-Engine. The Stretch-Engine is a prototype tool developed to demonstrate this approach and is designed to be integrated into an existing animation software, Maya. The Stretch-Engine contains a bipedal-humanoid rig with controls necessary for animation and the ability to squash and stretch. It can be accessed through a user interface that allows the animator to control squash and stretch by changing the shape of generated paths of motion. This method is then evaluated by comparing animations of realistic motion to versions created with the Stretch-Engine. These stretched versions displayed exaggerated results for their realistic counterparts, creating similar effects to Looney Tunes animation. This method fits within the animator’s workflow and helps new artists visualize and control squash and stretch to create exaggeration

Bringing tabletop technologies to kindergarten children

Taking computer technology away from the desktop and into a more physical, manipulative space, is known that provide many benefits and is generally considered to result in a system that is easier to learn and more natural to use. This paper describes a design solution that allows kindergarten children to take the benefits of the new pedagogical possibilities that tangible interaction and tabletop technologies offer for manipulative learning. After analysis of children's cognitive and psychomotor skills, we have designed and tuned a prototype game that is suitable for children aged 3 to 4 years old. Our prototype uniquely combines low cost tangible interaction and tabletop technology with tutored learning. The design has been based on the observation of children using the technology, letting them freely play with the application during three play sessions. These observational sessions informed the design decisions for the game whilst also confirming the children's enjoyment of the prototype