Review: LAIKA: Frame x Frame (BFI Southbank)
Review: LAIKA: Frame x Frame (BFI Southbank)

The joy of stop-motion films lies in noticing the little details, those intricate features crafted in miniature and tucked into the background of a scene, adding a richness of texture to the (usually) fantasy world onscreen. It is these little details that are celebrated by the British Film Institute’s new exhibition LAIKA: Frame x Frame, opening on August 12th and running until October 1st at the BFI Southbank, as part of their Stop-Motion season. With over 700 artefacts on display, walking through the exhibit evokes the very best stop-motion viewing experience, each glance revealing another miniscule, yet exquisitely modelled feature.

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EVENT REVIEWMarkus BeekenSTOP-MOTION, CRAFT, LABOUR, HOLLYWOODComment
4 Iconic Animation Characters Who Wear Glasses
4 Iconic Animation Characters Who Wear Glasses

In animation and film, disability representation is crucial in shaping the portrayal and perception of characters. A previous article took a closer look at Zatoichi the Blind Swordsman, and found that disability can either be a barrier or a defining characteristic that enhances a character’s depth and relatability to audiences. Such representations are often taken for granted, yet they carry significant symbolic and practical weight. This can be particularly evident in how vision disability is depicted through characters who wear glasses. Glasses worn by fictional characters serve as integral elements of character design, reflecting personality traits, intellectual abilities, and personal journeys.

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EDITORIALHollie HobbsCHARACTER, REPRESENTATION, GENDER, COSTUMEComment
An Analysis of George Dunning’s Yellow Submarine
An Analysis of George Dunning’s Yellow Submarine

Based on the music of the British pop band The Beatles, Yellow Submarine (George Dunning, 1968) is a film that perhaps best resembles the tradition of the jukebox musical. It tells the story of Pepperland, a music-loving utopia falling under siege by the music-hating Blue Meanies. By command of the Mayor, Captain Fred boards the titular yellow submarine to seek help. He discovers The Beatles and urges their help given their musical talents and their resemblance to Pepperland’s favourite musical group: Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. The Beatles join Old Fred (Fig. 1) on a journey back to Pepperland, and rally Pepperland’s citizens to rebel against the Blue Meanies. Harnessing the groovy power of psychedelic pop, they sing their way to freedom.

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EDITORIALKirstin Stevens SchmidtMUSICAL, SURREALISM, BRITISH ANIMATION, STYLE, AESTHETICS, COLOURComment
Maintaining Identity over Time in Animated Bodies during Metamorphosis Transitions
Maintaining Identity over Time in Animated Bodies during Metamorphosis Transitions

A character’s body in animation is believed to be a fluid form (Wells 1996) due to its ability to take on any intended form. Characters can manipulate their bodies to assume new identities, hiding, or losing their sense of self in the process (Clarke 2022), whether intentionally or not. However, when discussing identity in animation through the technique of metamorphosis, the body tends to be overlooked despite being mostly affected in these acts of transformation, as audiences are more focused on anticipating the outcome of metamorphosis (Torre 2010) rather than the transition between the two bodies and the reasons behind the way the body transitions.

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EDITORIALRui Han TeoMETAMORPHOSIS, BODY, CHARACTER, REPRESENTATION, ABSTRACTComment
The Bruno Edera Project: Archiving Adult Animation
The Bruno Edera Project: Archiving Adult Animation

It is easy to argue that pornographic animation is always transgressive, for it directly confronts hard-won stereotypes that animated films are somehow a children’s medium, or that it is a type of media watched solely for laughs that cannot be taken seriously. To consider the creative potentials of pornographic animation is to therefore theorize the plurality of what animation truly is as a medium. But the very existence of pornographic animation also threatens preconceived ideas that there would be such a thing as authentic pornography, that is a kind of pornography in which performers are actually enjoying themselves and not ‘lying,’ versus faking and over-performing.

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EDITORIALAurélie PetitADULT, PORNOGRAPHY, HISTORY, ARCHIVESComment
Animation vs Automation: Labour, Artificial Intelligence, and the Silent Crisis in the Animation Industry
Animation vs Automation: Labour, Artificial Intelligence, and the Silent Crisis in the Animation Industry

In 2009, Vivian Sobchack asked: “what might it mean to bring together the concepts and practices of ‘animation’ and ‘automation’”? At the time Sobchack was writing on the visibility of labour within a modern computer-generated cinematic framework, where computers have become advanced enough that they appear to “have a life of their own” (2009, 375). In her examination of Pixar’s computer-animated film WALL-E (Andrew Stanton, 2008), Sobchack notes that it is the machines, the robots like WALL-E and EVE, who are imbued with “the movement of life,” while the humans are left motionless.

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EDITORIALOliver VigniANIMATION, ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, LABOUR, HOLLYWOOD, INDUSTRYComment
Review: Memoir of a Snail (Adam Elliot, 2024) - Fantasies in the Trash Heap
Review: Memoir of a Snail (Adam Elliot, 2024) - Fantasies in the Trash Heap

Memoir of a Snail (Adam Elliot, 2024), the stop-motion story of Grace (or Gracie) a young mollusc-obsessed girl growing up in 1970s Australia, is not a fantasy film. Unless, of course, it is entirely a fantasy. As Grace thinks back over her life, and how she found herself in the ‘present day,’ she offers her pet snail Sylvia (and by extension the audience) a tale as bizarre, incongruous, and carefully curated as the vast array of snail-related memorabilia she has collected over the years.

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FILM REVIEWMarkus BeekenSHORTS, CRAFT, CHILDHOOD, STOP-MOTION, FAMILY Comment
Wizards: Flaws of Human Nature through Fantastical Animation
Wizards: Flaws of Human Nature through Fantastical Animation

Western culture has long had a preconceived notion that animation is primarily for children. Two prominent reasons for this positioning were the arrival of the Hays Code, a motion picture guideline that made censorship stricter starting in 1934 up until 1968 (and which included the censoring of animated stars such as Betty Boop), and the dominant influence that the Walt Disney Studios had upon shaping the identity of the medium as family-friendly (see Lewis 2021). These two forces converged to create cartoons marketed primarily towards younger audiences, leaving future generations of animators and studios to adopt and perpetuate this convention.

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EDITORIALJames GorczycaADULT, RALPH BAKSHI, REPRESENTATION, FANTASYComment
They Were More than Roommates: An Analysis of Ramona’s Growth in Scott Pilgrim Takes Off (2023-)
They Were More than Roommates: An Analysis of Ramona’s Growth in Scott Pilgrim Takes Off (2023-)

Scott Pilgrim Takes Off (2023-) is an anime adaptation of the original graphic novel by Bryan Lee O’Malley and directed by Abel Góngora, released in November 2023. One of the many adaptations of the original story, Góngora’s retelling shifts its focus to its female lead, Ramona Flowers while featuring a new narrative of forgiveness and reconciliation with past relationships.

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EDITORIALJada CarterADAPTATION, TELEVISION, GENDER, REPRESENTATIONComment
Annecy and Animafest Zagreb in the 1980s: Building Bridges for the Sino-European Opening-up in Animation
Annecy and Animafest Zagreb in the 1980s: Building Bridges for the Sino-European Opening-up in Animation

The following excerpts are taken from my recent book Chinese Animated Film and Ideology. Tradition, Innovation, Interculturality (2024) published by the CRC Press. This book will be of great interest to those in the fields of animation and film studies, political science, Chinese area studies, and Chinese philology. It especially considers animation film festivals history, paying particular attention to the culture-building role of the festivals Annecy (France) and Animafest Zagreb (former Yugoslavia) in the 1980s.

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EDITORIALOlga BobrowskaCHINA, FESTIVAL, SHANGHAI ANIMATION FILM STUDIOComment
The Best-Laid Plans of Mice and Magic, the lost art history of the Walt Disney Studio The Courvoisier years, 1938-1946
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.

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EDITORIALRon BarbagalloDISNEY, FILM HISTORY, CEL ANIMATION, ARTISTComment
Exploring Beets: Conceptualising Loneliness Through Metaphorical Symbolism
Exploring Beets: Conceptualising Loneliness Through Metaphorical Symbolism

The expression of emotion in the design of animated characters is not always a constant event or visible activity; rather, it is often presented in a subtle, complex, and multifaceted way. This is because the contribution of emotion to the formation of a character is closely connected with different backgrounds and contexts, which reflect the richness of human experience (Uhrig 2018).

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EDITORIALZhijun HuangMETAPHOR, SYMBOLISM, EMOTIONComment
Speaking to Impurity: The Preservation or Expulsion of Parasites in Iwaaki Hitoshi’s Parasyte
Speaking to Impurity: The Preservation or Expulsion of Parasites in Iwaaki Hitoshi’s Parasyte

Parasyte is a Japanese sci-fi/fantasy/horror manga created by Hitoshi Iwaaki, serialized from 1989 to 1994, and continuously adapted over the last decade into multiple films, animations, and television series. Its enduring popularity is evidenced by the recent Korean film adaptation, which emerged a decade after the last, Parasyte: The Grey. Most versions of Parasyte maintain the same core narrative, focusing on a high school student named Shinichi and an alien parasite named Migi that burrows into his right arm. They gradually form a trusting alliance to combat other parasytes that have taken over human brains. Through his interactions with Migi, Shinichi begins to ponder the justice of survival among non-human creatures.

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EDITORIALShao-Jie JhouANIME, MANGA, ANTHROPOMORPHISM, REPRESENTATION, PHILOSOPHY, BODYComment
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
The ‘Unmasking Scene’ in the Student Films of Shofela Coker
The ‘Unmasking Scene’ in the Student Films of Shofela Coker

Nigerian-born artist and illustrator Shofela Coker’s student films Oni Ise Owo (2007) and Iwa (2009) narrate tales of redemption at the intersection of divine will and the exercise of human agency. Iwa is a remake of the earlier animation completed as a Motion Graphics final project when Coker was an art student at the Memphis College of Art. This post reads a critical scene in both films to explore artistic creative agency at the intersection of traditional African art production and the digital provenance of animation.

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EDITORIALMichael OshindoroSUB-SAHARAN AFRICA, REPRESENTATION, BODY, TECHNOLOGYComment
The Perils and Problems of Fantasy and Animation
The Perils and Problems of Fantasy and Animation

From Shakespeare’s A Midsummer’s Night Dream to Disney’s Frozen (Jennifer Lee & Chris Buck, 2013), fantasy storytelling across multiple media has allowed authors to create grand tales of myths, magic, lore, love, and sacrifice. Since the codes and conventions of fantasy do not require the storyteller to be shackled to our world’s laws, sensitivities, cultures, or even physics, the fantastical worlds available to the genre blow us away by what can be possible if we just suspend possibilities, even for a while, so that dragons can fly in our midst and wizards can reveal to us our heroic destinies!

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EDITORIALAshton WhiteTELEVISION, SPECIAL EFFECTS, SPECTATORSHIPComment
Fantastic Turkish Cinema: Re-make or Not Re-make, That’s the Question - Part 2
Fantastic Turkish Cinema: Re-make or Not Re-make, That’s the Question - Part 2

In the previous blog post, I introduced a couple of eccentric films that have since been celebrated as cult classics. Rumour has it that The Man Who Saves the World, mentioned in that post, has been selected as one of the ten worst films ever made and is taught at universities in the US as an example of how not to make a film.

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EDITORIALSedef HizlanNATIONAL CINEMA, ADAPTATION, TURKISH CINEMA, SUPERHERO, FANTASY, REMAKEComment
Fantastic Turkish Cinema: Re-make or Not Re-make, That’s the Question - Part I
Fantastic Turkish Cinema: Re-make or Not Re-make, That’s the Question - Part I

Believe it or not, Yeşilçam, the studio system of Turkey, which became dominant from the 1960s to the 1980s, essentially introduced classical cinema to Turks. It drew its production systems from Hollywood—big producers familiarized themselves with the studio structure in Los Angeles and brought the same system back home—but localized the content to reflect the specific experiences of Turkish society.

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EDITORIALSedef HizlanNATIONAL CINEMA, ADAPTATION, TURKISH CINEMA, SUPERHERO, FANTASY, REMAKEComment
ZOMA Studios' Mmanwu
ZOMA Studios' Mmanwu

Since its inception, the animation industry has been a storytelling engine: telling all types of stories from all types of people. However, according to the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, the animation industry still has a representation problem. Multidisciplinary artist, Uzo Ngwu, is trying to combat the lack of African representation in animation with her newly founded studio ZOMA Studios and their debut project Mmanwu.

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EDITORIALUzo NgwuREPRESENTATION, IDENTITY, MAGICAL REALISM, NATIONAL CINEMAComment
Fantasy/Animation: David Bordwell (1947-2024)
Fantasy/Animation: David Bordwell (1947-2024)

To mark the life of distinguished film theorist and historian David Bordwell (1947-2024), and to add to the many tributes from across the disciplines of film and media studies, Chris and Alex have begun to collect some of Professor Bordwell’s writings that connect to fantasy and animation both in print and on his website davidbordwell.net and accompanying blog Observations on Film Art.

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EDITORIALChristopher Holliday and Alexander SergeantHOLLYWOOD, FILM HISTORY, CRITICISM, INTERPRETATION Comments