Posts tagged DIGITAL
Between Humans and Machine: The Iron Giant's Reflection of AI
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.

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EDITORIALAlyssa LamellTECHNOLOGY, ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, HOLLYWOOD, CEL ANIMATION, DIGITALComment
The Role of Animation in Creating New Visions for the Future
The Role of Animation in Creating New Visions for the Future

In the libraries of history and literature, there’s a recurring theme: it’s not enough to have knowledge, you have to be able to navigate it, accessing and linking relevant pieces of information that often seem disparate. The goal of the Library of Alexandria in Ancient Egypt was to amass all the knowledge in the world in one place, and the world’s first known index system, called the pinakes, was developed to organise the expanding collection as it became more and more unwieldy.

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EDITORIALElizabeth CoxARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, KNOWLEDGE, TECHNOLOGY, DIGITALComment
Empowering Inclusion through Animation: Pioneering Digital Resources for Cultural Competency at King’s College London
Empowering Inclusion through Animation: Pioneering Digital Resources for Cultural Competency at King’s College London

The story began with discussions with colleagues about cultural competence content to train staff and students. I appreciated the unique insights I had on these perspectives, both as an outsider (experiences I had as a non-native) and as an insider (working as an academic in the UK for the past 17 years). Driven by a desire to address this issue, I began exploring the less overt forms of bias, i.e., microaggressions. While explicit biases are widely acknowledged for their impact, implicit biases are subtler and vary significantly based on individual backgrounds, education, and conditioning.

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EDITORIALMandeep Gill SagooEDUCATION, ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, CREATIVE PRACTICE, DIGITAL Comments
Another Kind of Magic: Méliès, Mercury, and Machine Learning
Another Kind of Magic: Méliès, Mercury, and Machine Learning

The music video for Queen’s “Heaven for Everyone” from their then-final record Made in Heaven (1995) - and a song that originally appeared on Shove It (1991), an album by drummer Roger Taylor’s side project The Cross (and featuring Freddie Mercury as a guest vocalist) - includes somewhat surprisingly footage from Georges Méliès’ early ‘trick’ films A Trip to the Moon (1902) and The Impossible Voyage (1904).

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EDITORIALChristopher HollidayTECHNOLOGY, ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, VOICE, STARDOM, CELEBRITY, DIGITALComment
Hollywood’s Big Little Lie: why are digital VFX still cinema’s bad objects?
Hollywood’s Big Little Lie: why are digital VFX still cinema’s bad objects?

Judging from both the pre-release marketing materials and industry narratives that have surrounded both Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (Christopher McQuarrie, 2023) and Oppenheimer (Christopher Nolan, 2023), one would be forgiven for thinking that Hollywood still retains something of an aversion to digital VFX.

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EDITORIALChristopher HollidaySPECIAL EFFECTS, DIGITAL, COMPUTER ANIMATION, HOLLYWOOD, FRANCHISEComment
Review: BAFTSS Animation SIG Posthumous & Posthuman Animation Online Seminar
Review: BAFTSS Animation SIG Posthumous & Posthuman Animation Online Seminar

Last week the BAFTSS Animation SIG presented another stellar online event. This time the SIG offered to explore the uncanny territories of posthumous and posthuman animation. Organized by Dr. Sam Summers (Middlesex University) and featuring works-in-progress by a doctoral student Alice Giuliani (University of West London) and Dr. Christopher Holliday (King’s College London), the Posthumous & Posthuman Animation seminar took place on Zoom on May 10th 2023.

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EVENT REVIEWAnastasiia GushchinaPOSTHUMANISM, DIGITAL, ANIMATION, HOLLYWOOD, POLITICALComment
On Tom Cruise's Animated Face
On Tom Cruise's Animated Face

Mission: Impossible II (John Woo, 2000) - the second feature in the evergreen Hollywood blockbuster franchise - is a film fascinated by the creative possibilities of Tom Cruise’s face. The film’s extended opening sequence (comprising ostensibly of two action set-pieces, see left) is structured from the start by the drama and jeopardy engendered by the star’s recognisable physiognomy.

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EDITORIALChristopher HollidayHOLLYWOOD, STARDOM, DIGITAL, FACE, COMPUTER ANIMATION, SPECIAL EFFECTS, DEEPFAKESComment
Review: The Wheel of Time (Rafe Judkins, 2021-)
Review: The Wheel of Time (Rafe Judkins, 2021-)

The Wheel of Time (Rafe Judkins, 2021) is a highly anticipated Amazon Prime TV series based on Robert Jordan’s book series under the same title. The first season comprises eight episodes and recounts the events from The Eye of the World (1990), the first volume of Jordan’s epic saga, introducing its main characters in a familiar Tolkienian fashion.

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TELEVISION REVIEWAga J. DrendaFANTASY, AMAZON, DIGITAL, SPECIAL EFFECTS, ADAPTATIONComment
Looking at Pixar’s Soul
Looking at Pixar’s Soul

Pixar’s much-delayed computer-animated fantasy film, Soul (Pete Docter, 2020), was originally scheduled for theatrical release in the U.S. on June 19, 2020, yet was finally released on the Disney+ platform almost a year ago in December 2020. The story follows the life of a middle school music teacher named Joe Gardner (Jamie Foxx) who falls down a manhole on the streets of New York City into another world, a world in which his soul is separated from his body.

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EDITORIALFrancesca Lowney and Charlotte StonesPIXAR ANIMATION STUDIOS, COMPUTER ANIMATION, COMPUTER-ANIMATED FILM, DIGITAL, REPRESENTATIONComment
Pixar’s Loop (Erica Milsom, 2020) – Celebrating Difference
Pixar’s Loop (Erica Milsom, 2020) – Celebrating Difference

Pixar’s Loop (Erica Milsom, 2020) is an animated short film from Pixar Animation Studios, and part of the “SparkShorts” program that was designed to discover new storytellers and artists by producing short films on a smaller time frame and budget, giving directors freedom to explore new stories, techniques and workflows.

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EDITORIALJessica GibsonPIXAR ANIMATION STUDIOS, DISABILITY, GENDER, COMPUTER ANIMATION, DIGITALComment
Board of being lost: Robin Williams and the fantasy film Jumanji
Board of being lost: Robin Williams and the fantasy film Jumanji

The idea of the film star is bound up in the idea of ‘pure entertainment’ in two ways: a sense of an ideal world in which dilemmas and conflicts are harmoniously resolved, and in terms of the ways in which film stars offer audiences an idealised and intensified set of behaviours. With that in mind, one of the ways the 1995 fantasy film Jumanji (Joe Johnston, 1995) holds our interest is how it is the ‘authored’ work of a film star: in this case, Robin Williams.

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EDITORIALJames ClarkeFANTASY, CHILDREN, STARDOM, DIGITALComment
"The biggest star in the world": re-animating the king in Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019)
"The biggest star in the world": re-animating the king in Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019)

Michael Dougherty’s Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) was the thirty-fifth feature to star the giant kaiju (the Japanese word generally used to refer to giant movie monsters). Although it was the latest in a series of films spanning 65 years, it was only the fourth time that “the Big G” had appeared as a fully digitally animated creature, discounting the anime series on Netflix (2017/8).

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EDITORIALSteven RawleMONSTERS, SPECIAL EFFECTS, DIGITAL, CGI, REMAKE, REBOOTComment
How Life is Strange 2 (2018-) Introduced Fantasy to Reality
How Life is Strange 2 (2018-) Introduced Fantasy to Reality

Life is Strange 2 (2018-) is a deeply emotive episodic videogame that revolves around a teenager and his young brother who are thrown into a series of adventures steeped with numerous struggles rooted in modern social and cultural realism. Towards the beginning of the game, the boy’s father dies at the hands of a police officer (who also is killed), and the siblings must go on the run out of fear they may be wrongly accused, arrested and separated.

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EDITORIALGrace HebditchVIDEO GAME, CHILDREN, COMPUTER ANIMATION, DIGITALComment
Review: Spider-Man: Far From Home (Jon Watts, 2019)
Review: Spider-Man: Far From Home (Jon Watts, 2019)

Now that the proverbial dust has settled on Avengers: Endgame (Anthony Russo & Joe Russo, 2019), the fallout from the almost-three hour epic can well and truly begin. To immediately follow a film that is, to date, the highest-grossing film of 2019 and now the second-highest of all time (behind, of course, Avatar [James Cameron, 2009]) was always a tricky, if not borderline impossible, act. Yet coming a mere three months after Endgame and just two years (and six films) after Spider-Man: Homecoming (Jon Watts, 2017), the next instalment Spider-Man: Far From Home (Jon Watts, 2019) does a more than admirable job of taking up the reins left slack in a post-Endgame world.

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FILM REVIEWChristopher HollidaySUPERHERO, MARVEL, FRANCHISE, DIGITAL, CGIComment