current posts — Fantasy/Animation

Animation, Fantasy and the Disney/Pixar Dilemma

The shifting place of fantasy within contemporary animation allows us to make some preliminary discriminations about how fantasy’s own icons and images function in relation to the shaping of Hollywood studios and their brand identity. The continued business strength of the U.S. animation industry in the post-millennial period thanks to Pixar Animation Studios, DreamWorks Animation and Blue Sky - as well as the parallel renaissance of Disney Feature Animation - has provided a growing number of critically and commercially successful test cases that showcase where fantasy does (and does not) appear in popular animated media, but also how fantasy has become a default and highly durable viewing strategy utilised by audiences in determining the precise terms of studio authorship.

EDITORIALChristopher HollidayOctober 5, 2018DISNEY, PIXAR ANIMATION STUDIOS, ANIMATION, FANTASY, INDUSTRYComment

The Trouble with Reiniger?

Over the last eighteen months or so myself and Katharina Boeckenhoff (University of Manchester) have been engaged in archival research on the German animator Lotte Reiniger for a project about craft and animation. During that time I was grateful to be asked to write a chapter in Fantasy/Animation: Connections Between Media, Mediums and Genres on Reiniger by Christopher Holliday and Alexander Sergeant. While this chapter was not directly informed by the archival research we had been involved in, it raised a number of interesting thoughts and potential challenges that informed my writing.

EDITORIALCaroline RuddellSeptember 7, 2018FANTASY, ANIMATION, GERMAN EXPRESSIONISM, LOTTE REINIGER Comments

Making is Thinking: Writing a Fantasy Screenplay for a (hoped-for) Animated Film

Right around 2004, I speculatively wrote a feature-length screenplay. In that earliest moment of what has become a very long-running project, the core concept, at the level of theme and character types, was determined. This has now been a fourteen-year process of imagining a family film in the initial form of a screenplay (and I subscribe to the view that the screenplay is definitely not the film). In terms of the role of fantasy in the story model for our screenplay, of particular value for me has been the understanding that the genre offers writers and audiences an opportunity to be immersed in the kind of archetypal themes discussed by fantasy film screenwriter Jim V. Hart.

EDITORIALJames ClarkeAugust 24, 2018FANTASY, ANIMATION, SCREENWRITING, FILM PRACTICEComment

Fantastic Products: The Phantasmagorical Appeal of Animated Advertising

This post explores the way ideas of fantasy can provide new insight into animated advertising, and applies these to analyse the recent Ikea advertisement Ghosts (2018) and its use of digital animation. Exploring the long history of a particular form of fantasy, the phantasmagoria, allows a consideration of the ghostly iconography associated with it, as well as its use as a metaphor for the workings of capitalism.

EDITORIALMalcolm CookAugust 17, 2018FANTASY, ANIMATION, ADVERTISING, FILM HISTORY Comment

The Sounds of Silence (or, What Noises Do Animated Fantasies Make?)

The critical noise surrounding the recent release of horror film A Quiet Place (John Krasinski, 2018) has largely served to amplify its considered (and sparse) application of sound. The film’s narrative certainly explores the implications of selective sound and image arrangement, with the complex interplay between each sonic component used in service of crafting the danger of (largely offscreen) fantasies.

EDITORIALChristopher HollidayAugust 10, 2018CGI, DIGITAL, SOUND, MOTION CAPTUREComment

The Success of Animated Fantasy and Science-Fiction Cinema

When researching my contribution to Christopher Holliday and Alexander Sergeant’s collection Fantasy/Animation, I examined a range of sources that demonstrated the enormous box office success, both in the United States and in the rest of the world, of fantasy and science-fiction movies, and of ‘animation’ (a category here understood to include live action films heavily reliant on computer generated imagery) in recent decades.

EDITORIALPeter KrämerAugust 3, 2018FANTASY, ANIMATION, SCIENCE-FICTIONComment

The Subversive Horror of Fantasy and Animation

Fantasy and animation, especially when combined, are often associated within popular discourse with children’s media. Referring predominantly to stop-motion animation, this post offers some thoughts on what the intrinsic association between children, fantasy and animation might mean in the context of another genre that has a more problematic relationship with child audiences: horror. Although horror is rarely considered a children’s genre, horror films addressed to children do exist, and across various forms of animation and live-action: the stop-motion animated Frankenweenie (Tim Burton, 2012), CG-animated Monster House (Gil Kenan, 2006), or the live-action Hocus Pocus (Kenny Ortega, 1993).

EDITORIALCatherine LesterJuly 20, 2018FANTASY, STOP-MOTION, HORROR, CHILDRENComment

Louis Armstrong’s Flying Head, Clothing as Food, and Renegade Angels: Queering Animation through Fantasy

If a dragon were to suddenly swoop down from the clouds, spread its huge wings over London, and wrap its mighty body around Big Ben, it would certainly be strange. Unusual. Weird. Fantastic. Maybe even queer. Of course, such an incredible event is not about to happen. Dragons, faeries, wizards, elves, hobbits – all remain firmly in the realm of fantasy.

EDITORIALKodi MaierJuly 6, 2018FANTASY, ANIMATION, QUEER IDENTITY, CARTOON, TELEVISION Comments

What is Fantasy/Animation?

Welcome to Fantasy/Animation! Co-founded by Christopher Holliday and Alexander Sergeant, Fantasy/Animation seeks to examine the relationship that exists between fantasy cinema and the medium of animation.

This network began as an edited collection Fantasy/Animation: Connections Between Media, Mediums and Genres (Routledge AFI Film Reader, 2018). As editors, we worked alongside a number of world-renowned film and media scholars to produce a collection that examined a range of animated fantasy media, from the avant-garde experimental animation of Bret Battey to HBO’s Game of Thrones.

EDITORIALChristopher Holliday and Alexander SergeantMay 24, 2018FANTASY, ANIMATIONComment