The Persistence of Animation

It’s a Bird. It’s a Plane. It’s Bob Parr? Narrative Discourse in The Incredibles

Abstract: As Pixarʼs first film concentrating on humans rather than anthropomorphized characters, The Incredibles questions the similarities — and differences — between live-action and computer- animated films. The Incredibles blurs the line between live-action and animation, but, complicates vocabulary in traditional animation and live-action contexts, creating a new vocabulary. A close analysis of The Incredibles’ mise-en-scene reveals the film questions semantic/syntactic uses of super-hero genre. Pixarʼs style of animation forgets the cartoonal, moving the image from spectacle to a suitable cultural text, reflecting reality. I propose that The Incredibles exemplifies the growing relationship between live-action and computer animation

Biographical Statement: Chris is a NYU Graduate Student in Cinema Studies. His collegiate career began at Clemson University, receiving a BA in Computer Science. His real degree should have been dabbling since he took courses across the spectrum of studies: Art, Programming, Animation, Creative Writing, and Theatre. Graduating, getting married, and moving to Brooklyn, May 2008 was a busy month for him. Since things have settled, Chris has noticed that many of the theories, histories, and readings fail to address, or justify, his love of Goofy shorts, Pixar, and Frank & Ollie. He is currently trying to find how his love for animation can fit into his academic pursuits. As part of his inquiry Chris is presenting a paper on The Incredibles at Yale in late January. As an undergraduate he used eye-tracking technology to see how edits affected spectatorship in Toy Story.

Simulational Animation and Re-mediated Observation: An ontological study of 3D animation and the stop-motion camera in some early animated shorts of the Aardman studio

Abstract: This paper proposes the concept of “re-mediated observation,” or how the stop-motion camera may provide intense experiences of observation and scrutiny in similar yet discrete ways by recourse to the specificities shared by traditional 3D animation and live-action. This is studied in a specific type of animation termed as “simulational” in some early clay-puppet films of the Aardman studio. It demonstrates that the stop-motion camera is capable of an “observational” function akin to the live-action camera. It is argued that in such modes of simulational animation, notions of reality, observation and the real as recorded, observed and “revealed” by the camera are simultaneously emphasised, interrogated, subverted and eventually re-visited and redeemed.

Biographical Statement: Fatemeh Hosseini-Shakib is a researcher and PhD candidate, completing the final stages of her PhD in animation studies. She is also a lecturer in animation theory at the University for the Creative Arts at Farnham, UK.

Fatemeh has a BA in Graphic Communication from University of Tehran (1993 — Faculty of Fine Arts) and an MA in animation from Tehran Art University (1995 — Faculty of Cinema and Theatre). She has also been engaged in the practice of visual arts (including animation filmmaking) as well as teaching animation history and theory to MA students, prior to her arrival in the UK to start her doctorate in animation theory.

Her current research interests include the question of representation and realism (and its hybrid nature) in the works of Aardman studio, traditional 3D/puppet animation, medium specificity thesis regarding the interpenetrating relationship of cinema and animation, as well as “Iranian Animation” and its emerging forms and institutions, and finally animation as a tangible element of modernity in the non-western worlds.

The current paper proposed for this conference relates to part of her doctorate research on the “Hybrid Nature of Realism in Some Early Animated Shorts of the Aardman Studio.”

Update: Unfortunately, Fatemeh will not be able to attend the conference due to problem in obtaining a U.S. visa.