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Animation: an interdisciplinary journal

animation: an interdisciplinary journal provides the first cohesive international peer-reviewed publishing platform for animation that unites contributions from a wide range of research agendas and creative practice.

The journal’s scope is very comprehensive, yet its focus is clear and simple. The journal addresses all animation made using all known (and yet to be developed) techniques – from 16th century optical devices to contemporary digital media – revealing its implications on other forms of time-based media expression past, present and future.

animation: an interdisciplinary journal is essential and stimulating reading for academics, researchers, students, curators and practitioners in animation, film and media studies, cultural studies, critical theory, architecture, art & design, computer sciences, games studies and visual culture.

animation: an interdisciplinary journal promises not only an interdisciplinary and international scope, but also – and most significant at this historical moment – to re-mediate and inter-mediate a range of moving image platforms and to re-think the premises that have thus far found it proper to separate the ‘mashed potatoes’ of film theory from the ‘peas’ of animation theory and the ‘carrots’ of digital media theory. Indeed, animation: an interdisciplinary journal promises to provide us an exceedingly full and intellectually satisfying plate.” Vivian Sobchack, Professor of Film, Television and Digital Media, University of California, Los Angeles, USA

Electronic Access

Animation is available electronically on SAGE Journals at http://journals.sagepub.com/home/anm.

  • by Jonathan Mortimer
    Animation, Volume 19, Issue 2-3, Page 161-176, November 2024. Integral to the animation and visual effects (VFX) industry are graduates with industry focused skills. Yet, the industry is rapid and ever changing, almost defying attempts to define it. How then should animation/VFX, and indeed any subject of a similar nature, be taught to best prepare industry-ready graduates? This article describes Animation/VFX industry perceptions (N = 18) of current Animation teaching in further and higher education. Findings show that a large ‘gap’ in the ‘skills’ required exists, but with multitudinous perceptions and understandings of what this ‘skills gap’ is. The authors […]
  • by Mengxue Wei
    Animation, Volume 19, Issue 2-3, Page 146-160, November 2024. Studies on Chinese animation repeatedly mention the Shanghai Animation Film Studio’s (SAFS) creative intent of ‘serving children’. However, discussions on the specific child audience the studio serves and the studio’s service methods and objectives are scarce. This article analyses the studio’s creative history and intent from the 1950s to the 1980s, incorporating China’s socio-cultural context and policy formulation. The study uses SAFS creators’ self-narratives and interviews to argue that, during this period, the studio’s creative intent was determined by the Communist Party of China’s directives. To adhere to the Party’s will, […]
  • by Amrinder Singh Romana
    Animation, Volume 19, Issue 2-3, Page 185-188, November 2024.
  • by Piotr Konieczny
    Animation, Volume 19, Issue 2-3, Page 183-185, November 2024.
  • by Sylvie Bissonnette
    Animation, Volume 19, Issue 2-3, Page 129-145, November 2024. Studies on environmental animations have explored the politics of world-making and the interdependence of humans and animals. Taking as a case study the short Hungarian animation A Légy (Ferenc Rófusz, 1980), this article explores ways that animation can foster an ecological disposition in the viewer by presenting the worldview of a housefly from a first-person perspective. A Légy focuses on altersubjectivity, a term that Vinciane Despret (‘Ethology between empathy, standpoint and perspectivism’, 2010) uses to describe Jakob von Uexküll’s practice of adopting the animals’ perspectives. Because each species is attuned to […]
  • by Jack Parry
    Animation, Volume 19, Issue 2-3, Page 83-100, November 2024. This paper presents a framework for a phenomenology based on pure transcendental phenomenology that examines the nature of both the experience of viewing and creating animation. The technological innovation of film and cinema in general is based upon two overarching principles. The first is the phenomenon of the captured frame and the second is the spectator’s phenomenological experience of sequences of such captured frames. It is argued among animation and film theorists alike that the insights offered by the consideration of the phenomenon of the cinematic frame should form the nexus […]
  • by Christopher Holliday
    Animation, Volume 19, Issue 2-3, Page 179-182, November 2024.
  • by Mengxue Wei
    Animation, Volume 19, Issue 2-3, Page 177-179, November 2024.
  • by Ye Eun Kim
    Animation, Volume 19, Issue 2-3, Page 101-128, November 2024. Virtual reality (VR) storytelling offers immersive experiences that engage viewers in unique and interactive ways. This study investigates the viewer’s role within animated narrative-based VR and explores strategies and techniques employed to facilitate this engagement. Using thematic analysis, the authors examined 22 animated VR experiences and identified six key themes: viewer interaction, virtual body, viewer’s spatial perspective, voice of the narrator, directed viewing and providing options. These themes encompass various strategies used to activate the viewer’s role and enhance their immersion in the narrative. The findings reveal that interactive elements, such […]
  • by Suzanne Buchan
    Animation, Volume 19, Issue 2-3, Page 79-82, November 2024.
  • Animation, Ahead of Print.