Animated Landscapes: History, Form and Function

by Chris Pallant (Editor)

Overview

Studying landscape in cinema isn't quite new; it'd be hard to imagine Woody Allen without New York, or the French New Wave without Paris. But the focus on live-action cinema leaves a significant gap in studying animated films. With the almost total pervasiveness of animation today, this collection provides the reader with a greater sense of how the animated landscapes of the present relate to those of the past. Including essays from international perspectives, Animated Landscapes introduces an idea that has seemed, literally, to be in the background of animation studies.

The collection provides a timely counterpoint to the dominance of character (be that either animated characters such as Mickey Mouse or real world personalities such as Walt Disney) that exists within animation scholarship (and film studies more generally). Chapters address a wide range of topics including history, case studies in national contexts (including Australia, Japan, China and Latvia), the traversal of animated landscape, the animation of fantastical landscapes, and the animation of interactive landscapes. Animated Landscapes promises to be an invaluable addition to the existing literature, for the most overlooked aspect of animation.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781501320118
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	02/23/2017
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Chris Pallant is a Senior Lecturer at Canterbury Christ Church University, UK. His research includes animation, filmmaking production practices and technologies, and videogames. He has published on a range of topics, including Disney feature animation, the 'cartoonism' of Quentin Tarantino, performance capture, and Rockstar Games.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgements

Introduction


I – History: Formal Traditions

1. Seeing in Dreams - The Shifting Landscapes of Drawn Animation
Bryan Hawkins, Canterbury Christ Church University, UK

2. The Stop Motion Landscape
Chris Pallant, Canterbury Christ Church University, UK

3. Pixar, 'The Road to Point Reyes', and the long history of landscapes in new visual technologies
Malcolm Cook, Birkbeck, University of London, UK


II – History: National Perspectives

4. Australian Animation – Landscape, Isolation and Connections
Steven Allen, Winchester University, UK

5. Environmentalism and The Animated Landscape in Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984) and Princess Mononoke (1997)
Melanie Chan, York St John University, UK

6. Animating Shanshui: Chinese Landscapes in Animated Film, Art and Performance
Kiu-wai Chu, The University of Hong Kong

7. Latvian Animation: Landscapes of Resistance
Mihaela Mihailova, Yale University, USA


III – Form: Jourbaneys Through Animated Space

8. The Landscape in the Memory: Animated Travel Diaries
María Lorenzo Hernández, Universitat Politecnica de Valencia

9. Off the Rails: Animating Train Jourbaneys
Birgitta Hosea, University of the Arts, London, UK

10. Between Setting and Character: A Taxonomy of Sentient Spaces in Fantasy Film
Fran Pheasant-Kelly, University of Wolverhampton, UK


IV – Form: Peripheral Perspectives

11. The Metamorphosis of Place: Projection-Mapped Animation
Dan Torre, RMIT, Australia

12. Plasmatic Pitches, Temporal Tracks and Conceptual Courts: The Landscapes of Animated Sport
Paul Wells, Loughborough University, UK

13. The Zombiefied Landscape: World War Z (2013), ParaNorman (2012), and the Politics of the Animated Corpse
James Newton, University of Kent, UK


V – Function: Interactivity

14. Evoking the Oracle: Visual Logic of Screen Worlds
Tom Klein, Loyola Marymount University, USA

15. Beyond the Animated Landscape: Videogame Glitches and the Sublime
Alan Meades, Canterbury Christ Church University, UK

List of Contributors

Bibliography

Animation/Filmography/Other Media

Index

Editorial Reviews

This collection provides a rich and lively discussion on one of the most overlooked areas of animation—animated landscape, which, just as Pallant wants it to be, is to rebalance the long-term bias existing between character and landscape, which is related to the centrality of studies on character design and interpretation over reflections about landscapes. It ably explores the multivalent nature of animated landscape with an interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary approach, which also deepens the reader’s understanding of what animation is.” - Alphaville: Jourbanal of Film and Screen Media

“For so long animation studies literature has focused mainly on animated characters-at last a book that examines the other part of the frame: backgrounds and environments. Through historical analysis and theoretical considerations, Animated Landscapes brings attention to a significant but largely overlooked realm of animation aesthetics. The broad scope of essays by leading scholars in the field reflect the diversity of animation today.” —Maureen Furbaniss, Program Director of the Program in Experimental Animation, California Institute of the Arts, USA, and Founding Editor of Animation Jourbanal

“Animated landscapes: they're not just 'backgrounds' anymore. This collection by established and emerging scholars directs our attention to an aspect of animation that has long been treated as secondary, if it was considered at all. Far from being painting in motion, or even a depiction of nature, landscaping can be mindscaping, and an active, if not dominant element of the film, new media, or gaming experience. The book is a welcome addition to the growing body of work in animation studies.” —Donald Crafton, The Joseph and Elizabeth Robbie Professor of Film, Television, and Theatre, University of Notre Dame, USA, and author of Shadow of a Mouse: Performance, Belief, and World-making in Animation

“Animated Landscapes offers animation and media scholars multiple considerations on the history, function, and potential of an often-neglected subject in animation studies: animated space itself. Going beyond the topics of background and setting, editor Chris Pallant seeks ‘to advance our understanding of the animated landscape through discussions of history, form and function.’” – Synoptique

From the Publisher

Animated landscapes: they're not just 'backgrounds' anymore. This collection by established and emerging scholars directs our attention to an aspect of animation that has long been treated as secondary, if it was considered at all. Far from being painting in motion, or even a depiction of nature, landscaping can be mindscaping, and an active, if not dominant element of the film, new media, or gaming experience. The book is a welcome addition to the growing body of work in animation studies.

Donald Crafton

For so long animation studies literature has focused mainly on animated characters-at last a book that examines the other part of the frame: backgrounds and environments. Through historical analysis and theoretical considerations, Animated Landscapes brings attention to a significant but largely overlooked realm of animation aesthetics. The broad scope of essays by leading scholars in the field reflect the diversity of animation today.

Maureen Furniss