Cartoon Saloon has carved out a niche in the indie animation scene. With the exception of The Breadwinner (Nora Twomey, 2017), which was adapted from the Deborah Ellis book of the same name, all of the Irish animation studio’s films have drawn their influence from Celtic myths and legends. Various fantastical creatures, from faeries to selkies, are woven into the fabric of the stories they tell.
Read MoreI was always described as a child with her head in the clouds. Mine was a military family that moved from place to place every few years, traveling across the country. I was too young to stay connected to old friends each time we moved, so being continuously friendless wasn't unusual. One of my earliest memories was learning to adapt and make space for myself. I learned quickly that the most consistent friend I would ever have was myself.
Read MoreQuantum LOGOS (vision serpent) is an immersive reactive film that uses Mesoamerican culture as inspiration for design ideas that explore the basics of quantum mechanics. This project uses abstract animated imagery to metaphorically represent the quantum world. I use this approach because of the parallels that are evident between Mesoamerican art and philosophy and the quantum mechanics vision of the nature of reality.
Read MoreThere is considerable scrutiny of the politics of representation in Disney’s animated screen musicals. With appalling depictions of faceless African American workers in “Song of the Roustabouts” in Dumbo (Ben Sharpsteen, 1941), controversy about the representation of indigenous Americans in Pocahontas (Mike Gabriel & Eric Goldberg, 1995), and lightening the skin of Princess Tiana in Ralph Breaks the Internet (Rich Moore & Phil Johnston, 2018), there have been ongoing questions about limited, fetishized, and often racist characterisations of people of colour in the studio’s films.
Read MoreKipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts (Radford Sechrist, 2020-) is a colourful, post-apocalyptic animated adventure series based on the webcomic Kipo, which debuted on Netflix in early 2020 to much critical acclaim (Fig. 1). The story follows the titular Kipo, a 13-year-old “burrow girl” who finds herself thrust from the safety of her underground home to a surface world filled with talking, anthropomorphized animals, or “mutes,” as well as titanic, kaiju-sized “mega mutes.”
Read MoreAt Annecy 2020, Women in Animation held a digital summit on the theme ‘Reimagining the Future: Race, Solidarity and the Culture of Work’. At the panel ‘Black Women in Animation: Looking to the Future’, moderator Jamal Joseph from Columbia University asked, ‘What needs to happen now? How do we get more women in animation and how do we get more women of colour in animation and film?’
Read MoreLaurent Boileau’s 2014 French animated short Lady of the Night tells the story of Samuel, who retires to his bedroom following the annual commemoration dinner for his deceased lover Cornelius. Samuel is tortured by the closeted nature of their irretrievable relationship, and seeks refuge from his crushing personal regret – as well as wider oppressive social forces – by dressing up in drag and performing a ballad that voices his ‘yearning for the dream of freedom’.
Read MoreWhat’s in a flerken? Having watched Goose regurgitate the tesseract at the post-credit close of Captain Marvel (Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck, 2019), I immediately wanted to know: what’s in a flerken? Finding my answer meant looking to the comics, in particular the reboots of Captain Marvel in print by both Kelly Sue DeConnick and Margaret Stohl. I have to admit to not learning much more about flerkens, alien creatures which appear to resemble ginger cats, but DeConnick and Stohl’s revisionings did give me a lot more insight into Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel as a contemporary woman who struggles with her history.
Read MoreAlthough Nicole Brending’s feature animated film originally toured festivals as early as January 2019, Dollhouse’s general release coming in the wake of the #FreeBritney campaign feels somewhat auspicious. The film rides a satirical wave over US celebrity-centric media, focusing on the abuse and exploitation of a child singer, told through the medium of plastic dolls and puppets.
Read MoreThe most recent Pixar film, Onward (Dan Scanlon, 2020), tells the story of two brothers, Ian and Barley, who set out on a magical quest in a bid to spend one final day with their late father. On Ian’s sixteenth birthday he is presented with a gift left to him by his father, whom he has never met, with the instructions that he and his older brother could only open it when they were both at least sixteen. Onward is therefore a story strongly embedded in loss. Ian is a teenager, unsure of himself and anxious about transitioning into adulthood.
Read MoreIt seems fair to suggest that, right now, there is just a bit of cultural interest in the figure of the superhero. Thanks to the efforts of DC and the MCU in particular, the superhero film has arisen out of its somewhat middling status amongst Hollywood production schedules throughout the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s to reach a status comparable only to that once enjoyed by the classical western or musical.
Read MoreIn a world of globalised animation, anime’s influence is ever expanding, ranging from adult Netflix animations like Castlevania (Warren Ellis, 2017-) to a wide variety of western children’s TV shows from Teen Titans (Glen Murakami and Sam Register, 2003-2006) to She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (Noelle Stevenson, 2018-2020).
Read MoreMakoto Shinkai’s animated film Kimi No Na Wa, translated as Your Name, was a critical and commercial hit when it was released in 2016. The film depicts the strange and wondrous journey of two high school teenagers, city boy Taki in Tokyo and countryside girl Mitsuha in rural lakeside Itomori, who are inexplicably swapping bodies with each other.
Read MoreReformation-era German engraver, painter and printmaker Hans Holbein and quirky contemporary Polish animator Kajetan Obarski are two artists separated by several centuries that, in their similarities, attest to historical parallels and ramifications of the fantastic. As this post identifies, both artists illustrate the grotesque through a Carnivalesque trope in their work of the Danse Macabre. Both also prophetically remind their viewers of the stark facts of mortality, of people who are “like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field; the grass withers and the flowers fall” (Peter 1:24-25).
Read MoreJeff McLaughlin's Graphic Novels as Philosophy collects 10 essays that consider how well known graphic novels can be conceptualised through (and potentially expand) philosophy (Fig. 1). The collection covers, among others, considerations of social contract theory, carnival and the idea of queering epistemology. In addition, the reader is invited to consider how the format and structure of the graphic novel could enhance our ability to ‘do’ philosophical work.
Read MoreTo make the iconic French Provençal dish ratatouille, one must first prepare the ingredients, peel and cut the onions, chop the garlic, thinly slice the courgettes and the aubergines, de-seed the peppers and chop the tomatoes. To make animated ratatouille, one must simply pick up a pen.
Read MoreThe resources below were originally compiled in response to an email my colleague Kodi Maier sent to the Society for Animation Studies listserv in order to begin a conversation and resource exchange aimed at defining best practices for creating an anti-racist classroom in our subfield. I would like to once again thank Kodi for taking the initiative to remind us of our collective responsibility as scholars, educators, and human beings.
Read MoreThe Covid19 pandemic is not just about a virus; it is a social, economic and cultural phenomenon. The impact that it is making across the globe is severe, and the role of (perhaps even the need for) fantasy during this changing and hyperdigitalized world is more necessary than ever given the important questions being raised about the nature of our cultural consumption.
Read MoreThe comic book adaptation has become one of the most prominent genres in recent cinema. In response, academic studies on comic books, comic book adaptations, superheroes and their ilk, have increased in number with many scholars bringing a variety of critical approaches to this popular type of production. Drew Morton’s Panel to the Screen: Style, American Film, and Comic Books During the Blockbuster Era (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2016) focuses on an aesthetic used throughout cinematic adaptations of comic book properties, that of “remediation,” defined by Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin as “the representation of one medium in and by another” (6).
Read MoreTo celebrate the Fantasy/Animation website’s 100th (yes, 100th!) blog post we give you our Top 100 Fantasy/Animation films. A huge thank you to those academics, practitioners, VFX artists, animators, curators, filmmakers and fans out there who have contributed to Fantasy/Animation since we began. Here’s to the next hundred!
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