Animation Aesthetics Week 1

Article One:
How does the different types of animation in film and how those animation land on the mimesis to abstract continuum effect the way it is viewed by the audience and animation history and thus studied by the animation researcher?

Article Two:
How does the use of animation versus film effect the ideas of truth and illusion of characters and stories in film?

Article Three:
How does this virtual 3D internet Earth effect our perceptions of the world around us as well as our society?

Responding to Marion's answer to her Question about the first article:
Norman McLaren's definition of animation is just as relevant in today’s age of three-dimensional animation as it was when he referred to the “drawings” of two-dimensional animation. This definition still applies because it can be translated to all forms of animations. Though the new animation of studios like Pixar calls for expansive and impressive digital worlds and characters that are visually breathtaking, the essence of these animations still lies in “the result of movement created by an artist’s rendering of successive images”. The magic of these as well as all animations comes from the illusion of lifelike (or in some cases not lifelike) movement created by the animator through the stringing together of frames and not what each frame contains. This definition does not call on the viewer to focus solely on the act of creating and thus pulling their attention away from all the aspects that go into an animation. I think it tries to define animation by the sum of its individual parts and not by the separate parts individually. If the planning and intuition of the animator of what’s occurring between the frames does not work fluidly to create the desired illusion, the beauty of the image will not save the animation. In essence, the movement and the way of construction define animation and thus the frames’ art and other aspects of the film can be seen as almost secondary though still very important. In that way, Pixar’s animation as well as two-dimensional animation, puppetry, etc, can all still fit into McLaren’s definition.