CEL ANIMATION — current posts

Between Humans and Machine: The Iron Giant's Reflection of AI

Popular media has often portrayed technology as a looming threat to society and human livelihood. However, animation as a medium has provided a unique lens through which to explore the nuances of humanity's interaction with technological forces. Brad Bird's feature The Iron Giant (1999) stands as a poignant example of this exploration. By analyzing the use of hybrid animation techniques and storytelling in the film, I aim to unravel a metaphorical narrative that delves into humanity's relationship with technology, as well as its modern-day resonance with perceptions of artificial intelligence (AI) and assumptions on the threat of machine learning to humanity.

EDITORIALAlyssa LamellNovember 22, 2024TECHNOLOGY, ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, HOLLYWOOD, CEL ANIMATION, DIGITALComment

The Best-Laid Plans of Mice and Magic, the lost art history of the Walt Disney Studio The Courvoisier years, 1938-1946

This article is dedicated to Giannalberto Bendazzi, Italian historian and writer.

There is no glitter that plays with the souls of film fanatics like the art produced by the Walt Disney Studio. The films made by Disney hold an emotional spot in the hearts of their fans and this is not by accident. Their characters are drafted to connect to how we feel about ourselves and where we feel we fit within our own lives. The good-versus-evil plot lines that come out of Disney sell us the fantasy that people in power are punished when they try to hold other people back, and the way these narratives are designed to exploit our need to believe in these happy endings has created a cash machine for Disney that is almost unique in the realm of big box office animation.

EDITORIALRon BarbagalloMay 24, 2024DISNEY, FILM HISTORY, CEL ANIMATION, ARTISTComment

“Two Cadaverous Vultures”: Disney’s Gift to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York

In January 1939, the Metropolitan Museum of Art announced its acceptance of an animation cel set-up from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (David Hand, 1937) and “presented by the artist, Walt Disney” (Burroughs, 1939) (Fig. 1). The gift — an ink and gouache painting on transparent celluloid, laid over a hand-painted background — was duly hung with the museum’s other “recent accessions,” and immediately generated considerable coverage in the nation’s major newspapers, magazines, and wire services.

EDITORIALHeather HolianMarch 1, 2024ARCHIVES, HOLLYWOOD, CARTOON, DISNEY, CEL ANIMATION, ARTISTComment

Rethinking the Disney Renaissance

The Disney Renaissance is one of those curious constructs that circulates among the Walt Disney Company and its fan communities, entering academic studies of Disney animation largely unchallenged. What, exactly, was the Disney Renaissance? One of the many pleasures and privileges of being an animation scholar is not only to think about Disney, but to think about how we think about Disney. And unsurprisingly, a lot of the critical discourse on Disney is shaped by Disney itself.

EDITORIALPeter C. KunzeNovember 24, 2023DISNEY, HISTORY, ANIMATION, CEL ANIMATION, HOLLYWOODComment

Joker’s Techno-Scientific Delights: Mannerist Science and Technology in the Animated Joker Universe

Allowing for the unanticipated to occur and offering “a particular field for rethinking the relation of the virtual as not opposed to the real, but as wholly real in itself” (Thain 2016, 5), the medium of animation is able to go beyond reality, and (in so doing) allows new artistic expressions at the intersection of body and movement, the renegotiation of the human being and its relationship to machines, and experimentation with the cultural meaning of science and technology.

EDITORIALAnna-Sophie JürgensNovember 27, 2020BATMAN, TELEVISION, CEL ANIMATION, HORROR, ADAPTATION, COMIC BOOKComment