SOCIETY FOR ANIMATION STUDIES NEWSLETTER Volume 13, Issue 1 Summer 2000 President’s Report We are now well into the year 2000. The conference thought. This should therefore be a discussion point in Norway with the theme ‘Digital Challenges B during the SAS Annual General Meeting in Expanded Boundaries’ will start in August and there Trondheim. There are currently forty paying will be 25 papers presented. Unfortunately, Rune members, far too few to warrant sending out Kreutz has fallen sick and may not be able to Newsletters and supporting a homepage. complete his task, but others have taken it over so the conference can go ahead. We wish Rune a speedy In the last Newsletter I announced that SAS is recovery. Earlier experience has also taught us that going digital, exchanging news through E-mail. In organizing a conference are a very hard task, usually this newsletter, Maureen Fumiss tells us something done as well as our normal work. We wish the about the start of the Animation Journal E-mail organizers every success with the final stages. Group. An example of a medium, which SAS should embrace? The amount of information that The conference is the most important activity of the I’ve gathered through this E-mail group is more Society for Animation Studies. It is where we meet than could be placed in five Newsletters. each other and where ideas and research results are exchanged. This is highlighted by the fact that, up to Jeanpaul Goergen writes a regular e-mail with news now, very few reactions have been received through to the European SAS members. He has now made the Newsletters to settle the membership fees. A an overview of all the European members, including number of members paid their contributions during addresses and e-mail. A pilot project for the whole the conference last year, which gives food for of SAS? Have you passed on your E-mail address yet? Do it now, to [email protected]. Further to my proposal to set up a fund for translating important books on animation film, IN THIS ISSUE Giannalberto Bendazzi has an interesting suggestion for getting the fund off to a good start. President’s Report 1 You see that there are various interesting topics that are now under discussion in view of the continued 2-4 SAS Conference Trondheim Presentations existence of the Society for Animation Studies. It is up to you to carry things through by paying your 5 Bendazzi, Williams & Animation Journal E-group contribution if you have not already done so. See you in Trondheim, Norway. 6 MGM book & Arte Animazione Ton Crone SAS Newsletter 1 Digital Challenges - Expanded Boundaries SAS Conference Norway, 5-9 August 2000 Notice that the conference dates have changed: The conference in Trondheim will begin on Saturday 5 August and last until Wednesday 9 August. The Animated Tour is planned for Wednesday 9 to Friday 11 August. The theme of the 2000 conference is ‘Digital Challenges – Expanded Boundaries’. The main focus will be directed to the future. However, this focus can easily be blurred without a proper historical foundation and understanding of evolutions of the past. How will new technology influence aesthetics, individuals, and institutions? How can previous technological and esthetical (r)evolutions help us understand the changes going on today? New technology is creating a situation where production costs can be reduced to levels not seen before. Does this increase in technological access lead to improved conditions for animators or will counteractions prevent this from happening? What will happen with classic animation techniques in the future? The debate on motion capture techniques has been going on for some time, and the question whether this can be regarded animation or not reveals new challenges. Do we need new definitions and frameworks to understand animation? Animation is gaining importance in new fields. Both in film production, web-design, video art, and computer games it is now a common technique and tool. This means that research from different branches will be of interest for the conference. We hope to present broad perspectives that reflect the diversity within the current use of animation techniques. For more information contact: Norsk Animasjonsforum/Animerte Dager Brittania P.O.Box 1405 N-1602 Fredrikstad Norway tel: +47 69 316924 ; fax: + 47 69 300934 ; email: [email protected] Presentations DIGITAL TOPICS Keith Bradbury (Griffith University) Towards a Spiritualist Aesthetic: Boundaries in Cyberspace? The paper explores what might be meant by a spiritualist aesthetic, the importance of the body in such an aesthetic and how such an aesthetic might create boundaries in cyberspace. John Southall Expanding Boundaries - Setting Boundaries: The Role of Theory and Paradigms in Understanding Developments in Animation The paper will offer some thoughts on the current impact of technology on film and animation; both from the view point of the film produced and of its reception by audiences. It will argue that the idea of expanding boundaries is a constant and one that plays a role in the creative and social development of any medium. Roger Palmer The Animated Image: Tradition versus Technology Down-Under The Animated Image: Tradition versus Technology Down-Under presents a brief overview of the Australian animation industry with attention to popular expectations for applied electronics and computer aided imaging systems. Pedro Faria Lopes, Amélia Muge and Maria Moreira (Instituto Superior de Ciencias do Trabalho e da Empresa) 2D Computer Morphing Animation for ‘Transgressing the Norm’ This paper describes the challenges and approaches developed to produce a Betacam SP video, 4’ 26” long, for TV broadcast, that implied a multidisciplinary interaction between live action production, with singing and dance choreography, and computer animation development and integration. SAS Newsletter 2 Laura Knight (Staffordshire University) From Flip to Zip: Patterns of Delivering Animation Education to Pre Degree Students as Part of a School Curriculum What are the direct and meaningful links between the Flipbook and Zip Drive to the educationalist? The presentation will include screenings and examples of work, which will illustrate the variety, method of presentation and potential of animation within the curriculum for pre degree students. Alastir Herron (University of Ulster) Digital Challenges, Expanded Boundaries While the new technologies present animation with the possibilities for quicker, more convergent forms of media presentations does this ongoing change also enhance a deeper understanding of classic animation techniques, like for example, drawing? John Grace (Loughborough University) Everything Changes, Nothing Changes Developments in desktop animation and telephony will give animators total control of the production path and freedom to distribute their work widely via the internet. To take advantage of existing and dazzling new opportunities student animators need to master key skillsets – technology comes to the rescue with on-line learning. Robert Hamilton (Karlstad University) Interactive Animated Projections Animation is a medium that necessitates a careful and precise consideration of each of its elements. Time, movement, lighting; every technical aspect of a work is carefully considered. By its very nature animation is lean. One cannot afford to render superfluous images. Every frame is calculated and meditated upon. This is true of animation now, as it was 100 years ago. Like many other areas of filmmaking, animation has greatly changed and generally benefited from all things digital. Lucy Childs (University of Luton) The Ghost of Happy Accident How do digital puppeteers work? What are the differences between real and virtual puppetry? Using texts and examples old and up-to-the minute Lucy Childs will explore the question ‘are digital accidents possible?’ in relation to puppets and puppetry. Marina Estela Graca (Universidade do Algarve) Physiology: towards Animation Poetics This essay regards animation as a physiological response to the mechanisation of the senses, a phenomenon that occurred the minute machines were able to take over, and largely exceed, the limits of human sensing capability. Animation would represent a way to physically respond in a wider and multidimensional context, according sensory impressions – which we could never directly feel – with movements and attitudes that we could never directly do. OTHER TOPICS Mark Langer (Carleton University) Class and the Body in Fleischer Films, 1930-40 Paper will investigate the thesis that as the class orientation of Fleischer films changed over the decade from working- class to middle-class, there was a subsequent re-inscription of the body. The morphology of human corporeality shifted from being on the interstitial point between the animal and human realms to one that was clearly delineated as outside the animal realm. Gunnar Strøm (Volda University Highschool) The Animated Documentary: a Performative Tradition By tracing the history of the animated documentary Strøm argues that performative or poetic documentaries are not new phenomena of the 1980s and 1990s but part of an ongoing tradition since the 1920s. The animated documentary never died. SAS Newsletter 3 Pierre Floquet (Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Electronique et de Radioélectricité de Bordeaux) Animated Characters: Actioned, or Actors ? Long before Lara Croft and others, the cartoon character - as understood by Avery - proved to be ‘somebody’ more than a mere animated figure, shaped into a personality and acts of ‘its’ own. Richard J. Leskosky (University of Illinois) J. R. Bray’s 1916 Animation Patent John Randolph Bray applied for and received patents on most aspects of the cartoon animation process. In the 1916 patent discussed here, Bray laid claim to a process more or less identical with the slash technique, developed by Raoul Barre in part to circumvent Bray's earlier patents. Robin Allan Fantasia Now and Then: an Exploration of the New Fantasia 2000 compared with its 1940 Forerunner An examination of the new seven pieces of Fantasia 2000, compared with the first film of 1940 and its original eight sections.