Margaret J. Winkler

As the leading distributor of animated cartoons in the 1920s, Margaret J. Winkler played a pivotal role in the professionalization of the animation industry. Her company, M. J. Winkler, distributed and financed several of the most significant animated series of the period, including Pat Sullivan and Otto Messmer’s Felix the Cat, the Fleischer brothers’ Out of the Inkwell, and Disney’s Alice Comedies. (“Disney” here and throughout refers to the Disney Brothers Studio. Walt Disney as an individual will be referred to by first and last name.) Winkler’s management of these series shaped their development in both economic and aesthetic terms. Unfortunately, after her marriage to Charles Mintz at the end of 1923, her involvement in the business declined, and by 1926 she had retired from the film industry following the birth of their two children

Animating perception: British cartoons from music hall to cinema, 1880 - 1928

This thesis examines the history of animated cartoons in Britain between 1880 and 1928, identifying a body of work that has been largely ignored by film and animation historians, covering the production, distribution, and exhibition of these films. Throughout this history, graphic arts - especially print cartooning and illustration - and the music-hall lightning cartoon act are found to have played a formative role in British animated cartoons. The artists who made the first British animated cartoons were almost exclusively drawn from one of those two fields and thus this work may be considered to form a parallel history of ‘artists’ film’. They brought with them to film a range of concerns from those prior forms that would shape British animated cartoons. Examining that context provides an understanding of the ways British animated cartoons developed in technologic, economic, and aesthetic terms. This work includes the first in-depth history of the music-hall lightning cartoon act, which finds that it anticipates cinematic animation, featuring qualities such as transformation, the movement of line drawings, and the desire to bring drawings to life. Building on this history, a new critical framework for examining these films aesthetically is provided, emphasising the role of the spectator and their perceptual processes. This framework draws upon the work of E.H. Gombrich and Sergei Eisenstein, and extends it to include recent findings from neuroscientific fields. The result is an original aesthetic reading of this body of work, which finds the films to have a deep engagement with the basic perceptual processes involved in viewing moving line drawings

Creative approaches to emotional expression animation

In facial expression research, it is well established that certain emotional expressions are universally recognized. Studies into observer perception of expressions have built upon this research by highlighting the importance of particular facial regions, actions, and movements to the recognition of emotions. In many studies, the stimuli for such studies have been generated through posing by non-experts or performances by trained actors. However, character animators are required to craft recognizable, believable emotional facial expressions as a part of their profession. In this poster, the authors discuss some of the creative processes employed in their research into emotional expressions, and how practice-led research into expression animation might offer a new perspective on the generation of believable emotional expressions

Considerations for believable emotional facial expression animation

Facial expressions can be used to communicate emotional states through the use of universal signifiers within key regions of the face. Psychology research has identified what these signifiers are and how different combinations and variations can be interpreted. Research into expressions has informed animation practice, but as yet very little is known about the movement within and between emotional expressions. A better understanding of sequence, timing, and duration could better inform the production of believable animation. This paper introduces the idea of expression choreography, and how tests of observer perception might enhance our understanding of moving emotional expressions

Investigating facial animation production through artistic inquiry

Studies into dynamic facial expressions tend to make use of experimental methods based on objectively manipulated stimuli. New techniques for displaying increasingly realistic facial movement and methods of measuring observer responses are typical of computer animation and psychology facial expression research. However, few projects focus on the artistic nature of performance production. Instead, most concentrate on the naturalistic appearance of posed or acted expressions. In this paper, the authors discuss a method for exploring the creative process of emotional facial expression animation, and ask whether anything can be learned about authentic dynamic expressions through artistic inquiry

'Tout est romanesque dans la Révolution de la France.' : a study of French prose fiction of the years 1789-1794

This thesis has three main aims to give information about the prose fiction of the period 1789-1794, to situate these works in their historical and social background, and to compare different categories of prose fiction in an attempt to gauge their effectiveness, their qualities, and their failures. The study points out the previous lack of worthwhile criticism, shows how some authors attempt to shake off the chains of moral servitude, and introduces the difficulties of a practical nature that beast writers during the Revolution. The second chapter discusses writers' adherence to the moral cliché- that virtuous conduct will lead to happiness - and examines ways in which authors attempt to vary their instructive process. The third and fourth chapters’ trace the technical progression of this process; the third, concentrating on licentious novels, concludes that the cliché retains its force, while the fourth, itself divided into three main sections, examines pornographic works that are written, 1) because sex is a saleable product, 2) because the description of the excessive sexual appetites of important figures questions their ability to govern, and 3) because pornography represents a means of portraying both a political faith and a personal dilemma. The fifth chapter shows how fiction incorporates real (i.e. historically verifiable) elements for the purpose of propaganda. Here the manner of the description determines the political interpretation. In contrast, the next chapter introduces allegorical and mock Oriental stories where lightly-veiled fiction consents on the revolutionary situation by drawing obvious parallels. A chapter on Republican fiction shown how writers used the pastoral (itself a form of allegory) to popularise the principle of An II republicanism, virtue. A concluding section on Restif de Ia Bretonne illustrates how one author attempted each of the options open to the fiction of the period

Good design is only part of the story

Good design is only part of the stor

‘Lux Presents Hollywood’: films on the radio during the ‘golden age’ of broadcasting

This chapter examines the long-running radio anthologies Lux Radio Theater (1934-1955) and the Screen Guild Theater (1939-1952; sponsored by a range of different products), which broadcast adaptations of Hollywood movies on the NBC and CBS networks during US radio’s ‘golden age.’ During this period radio ownership increased exponentially, and the medium’s escapist comforts were prized so highly that many Depression-era families prioritized their radio hire-purchase payments over those of more functional, household appliances. It was also an era when the difficulty of how radio could be exploited commercially was solved by the devolution of programming to advertising agencies. Advertisers not only leased airtime and studio facilities from the radio networks, they also hired creative staff, such as writers, actors and producers, who became employees of specialist radio departments for agencies like JWT (the J. Walter Thompson Company, whose biggest client was Lever Brothers, the manufacturers of Lux soaps and detergents). Adaptation critics often cite commercial interests as a key motivation for adaptation, but this has seldom been more conspicuously evident than in these anthologies. Each episode unabashedly blended its source narrative with endorsements of soaps, face powders, cigarettes and gas stations, as well as with ‘movie news’ that used stars to promote both forthcoming feature films and the sponsors’ products. The resulting adaptations demonstrate the creative results of commercial exigencies and complex, industrial co-dependency (in which radio, film, magazines, stars, advertising agencies and ‘luxury,’ modern products all sustain, promote and profit from one another.) The anthologies also reflect in microcosm a number of adaptation approaches and critical debates: for example, some episodes, such as Screen Guild Theater’s adaptation of His Girl Friday, feature the films’ original stars, whilst many Lux Radio Theater adaptations include large portions of their sources’ screenplays. Other episodes reject fidelity and homage, such as Screen Guild Theater’s two adaptations of Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, which replace family-oriented sentimentality with lampoonery aimed at adult, war-time audiences. Many adaptations contain medium-specific modifications, such as Screen Guild Theater’s accommodation of telling rather than showing through the introduction of mise-en-abyme story-tellers and listeners. By contrast others display a flagrant disregard for such considerations (such as the choice of ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and puppet Charlie McCarthy as one narrator-narratee pairing) in ways that reveal much about radio’s habitual intertextuality and parasitism during a period when the need fill airwaves was a paramount concern. The adaptations’ promotional segments also provide some film-history ‘hidden gems,’ such as host Cecil B. DeMille’s interview with Walt Disney during Lux Radio Theater’s ‘Snow White’ (in which both men advocate that film costumes and women’s ‘dainties’ be washed with Lux Flakes). In this chapter I will analyze in detail adaptations of Snow White and His Girl Friday (which were both adapted several times), whilst also drawing on a number of other episodes (such as reworkings of The Wizard of Oz and Casablanc). I will examine how the adaptations were shaped by the radio industry, its practices and technologies, how the anthologies influenced other radio programmes (for example, through their reliance on stars) and how they exemplify key debates within the study of cross-media adaptation

Same game, no winners : COVID-19, U.S.-China rivalry, and Southeast Asian geopolitics

For more about the East-West Center, see http://www.eastwestcenter.org/Ian Storey and Malcolm Cook, Senior Fellow and Visiting Senior Fellow, respectively, at ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, Singapore, explain that "In Southeast Asia, what we are witnessing thus far is less a rupture event and more an amplification of the current geopolitical dynamics.

An empirical study of electricity and gas demand drivers in large food retail buildings of a national organisation

AbstractFood retail buildings account for a measurable proportion of a country's energy consumption and resultant carbon emissions so energy-operating costs are key business considerations. Increased understanding of end-use energy demands in this sector can enable development of effective benchmarking systems to underpin energy management tools. This could aid identification and evaluation of interventions to reduce operational energy demand. Whilst there are a number of theoretical and semi-empirical benchmarking and thermal modelling tools that can be used for food retail building stocks, these do not readily account for the variance of technical and non-technical factors that can influence end-use demands.This paper discusses the various drivers of energy end-uses of typical UK food retail stores. It reports on an empirical study of one organisation's hypermarket stock to evaluate the influence of various factors on annual store electricity and gas demands. Multiple regression models are discussed in the context of the development and application of a methodology for estimating annual energy end-use demand in food retail buildings. The established models account for 75% of the variation in electricity demand, 50% of the variation in gas demand in stores without CHP and 77% of the variation in gas demand in stores with CHP