Archive for the Stop motion animation Category

Mar 15 2009

Jane Shadbolt

Posted by: hdenerof in Live action and animation, Stop motion animation, Visual effects

Parallel Synchronised Randomness — Stopmotion Animation in Live Action Feature Films

Abstract: In a film world obsessed with photoreal simulations of impossible worlds some filmmakers celebrate a different aesthetic that rejects the seamless integration of 3D realism for a consciously hand-made animated reality.

This paper examines the history of stopmotion effects in live action feature films with a specific analysis of Michel Gondry’s The Science of Sleep as an alternate model for both concepts of special effects.

Biographical Statement: Jane Shadbolt is a filmmaker and animator. She is currently in post-production for the 9-minute short animation, The Cartographer, a miniature epic featuring stopmotion characters in a digital world. She lectures in Visual Communications at the University of Newcastle, Australia.

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Mar 08 2009

Laura Ivins-Hulley

Posted by: hdenerof in Spectatorship, Stop motion animation

Performing Characters: An Audience-Centered Analysis

Abstract: This paper asks how “actual” audiences understand performance in stop motion and puppet animation films, drawing methods of empirical, qualitative analysis from the wider field of media reception and ethnography. Some of the key questions I have in conducting this study are: Do our current frameworks for animation performance correspond with the viewing practices of audiences? What criteria do audiences find most importance for assessing a puppet’s or clay figure’s performance? Through a series of focus groups and interviews, participants related their interpretations of short animations, emphasizing the importance of character and raising unexpected issues for audience identification.

Biographical Statement: Laura Ivins-Hulley is a doctoral student studying film and media at Indiana University. Her research includes inquiries into animated performance and spectatorship, and this paper attempts to help widen the methodologies available in the study of both. To that end, this fall she will begin a project on adults’ memories of Saturday-morning cartoons, examining how they narrate their childhoods and identities through them.

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Mar 05 2009

Fatemeh Hosseini-Shakib

Posted by: hdenerof in Animation studios, Live action and animation, Stop motion animation

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.

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