FS30190 Animation

Academic Year 2024/2025

Free from the constraints of photographic realism, animation has the capacity to render anything that can be imagined with comparatively little reference to indexical actuality. If it can be dreamed, it can be drawn. This makes it arguably the most ‘cinematic’ of all visual media forms. Despite its pervasiveness, animation often goes unnoticed, blending seamlessly into everyday media experiences. In an era where technology allows for easy creation of animated content, it is easy to forget animation is a film and media art form with a history as long and as varied as live action cinema and with roots in theatre and pre-cinematic magic and visual storytelling which has shaped human perception. It is a medium unto itself.

This module explores how we engage with and interpret animation both historically and in contemporary society. It traces the evolution of the medium from its origins to the present day, considering its economic, sociocultural, national, and ideological significance from a variety of theoretical and critical perspectives. Writing about animation is rich and varied, delving into the technical and the philosophical in equal measure. Topics such as ontology, the uncanny, memory, transhumanism, and the definitions of ‘life itself’ which form part of the illusion of life are explored from global, national, transnational, cultural and ethnic perspectives, reminding us of the spiritual and metaphysical dimensions inherent in the aesthetics of motion and their representation. Due attention will be given to practical and technical processes, but this module is theoretical in orientation and requires engagement with academic frameworks and reading and will require critical reflection and scholarly research and writing.

Content Note: Animation is not just a medium for children and films discussed and shown in whole or in part on this module will contain challenging content more often than you might presume. Even films for children will, for instance, feature significant representation of environmental disaster, sexual threat and/or coercion, and parental death (all of these are in Disney’s Bambi (1942)) and usually centre on a dominant heteronormative white male villain frequently deploying economic aggression and evincing discriminatory attitudes and behaviour. Though we recognise the need for students to make informed decisions about the likelihood of encountering problematic representations or perturbing content in the course of their studies, the important thing to bear in mind is that these are works of representational (and sometimes nonrepresentational) art with sociopolitical and socioeconomic context being presented not as instruction, indoctrination, or propaganda for uncritical consumption, but in educational environment as an object of scholarly study, critical analysis, and discussion for critical media literacy and informed citizenship.

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Curricular information is subject to change

Learning Outcomes:

This module will:
1) provide vocabulary and theoretical frameworks to facilitate students to acquire a comprehensive knowledge base pertaining to the history of animated film around the world and also understand the production methodologies and technical procesess by which animation is created and delivered
2) enable students to write critically and engage theoretically with animation as a representational paradigm, an art form, an industrial process, and a cultural phenomenon.
3) allow students to distinguish between various types and forms of animation and be capable of making critical judgements upon their place and function within the societies that produce them.
4) facilitate the written scholarly analysis of animated films at a level commensurate with advanced undergraduate film studies .

Indicative Module Content:

Animation is delivered in two blocks of approximately two hours each weekly, consisting of formal lecture in one part and a combination of screening and seminar in the other. Weekly reading lists will be provided with required, recommended, and reference reading, allowing for specified activity and scope for independent learning leading to the preparation of materials for assessment. Assessment will be by means of two essays: a mid-term writing assignment and a final essay of advanced undergraduate standard.

Indicative topics (subject to change):
Origins of animation
Business models in animation production
Animation processes, techniques, and technologies
Animation forms and types
Animation aesthetics
Realism and realisms in animation - formative and normative contexts
Audiences and models of reception
Convergence: posthumanism and digital cultures
Orthodoxy and ideology: reading, resistance, and reception
'Adult' and avant-garde animation
Authored animations and subjectivity
Language and image - translation, transnationalism, and cultural specificity
Music in animation
Graphic art and animation in cultural context (comix, animé, bande-desinée)
Metamorphosis and its meaning in theory and practice
History, memory, personality and the navigation of the imagined self

Student Effort Hours: 
Student Effort Type Hours
Lectures

24
Laboratories

24
Specified Learning Activities

60
Autonomous Student Learning

100
Total

208
Approaches to Teaching and Learning:
Students are expected to attend two teaching blocks each week - the lecture block and the screening block. Time and participant engagement permitting, there will be provision for seminar style discussion in the screening block. There are no formal tutorials at level three, though there is open consultation every week throughout the trimester and in-class discussion is encouraged. The expectation is that at level three, independent learning skills will be expanding and developing, and a greater emphasis on research is expected. There are, of course, weekly required and recommended readings which provide specified learning activities, but an extensive research bibliography is also provided to enable independent scholarship. As a level three module, this course will require an advanced level of knowledge of the relevant vocabulary and theories of film, even though animation will in fact introduce a fairly extensive set of new ones and introduce new intellectual and conceptual challenges. 
Requirements, Exclusions and Recommendations
Learning Recommendations:

This is an advanced undergraduate module and should not be attempted without sufficient experience to engage with the topic at the requisite level and with a capacity for independent learning based on research.


Module Requisites and Incompatibles
Equivalents:
Animation (FS30030)


 
Assessment Strategy  
Description Timing Open Book Exam Component Scale Must Pass Component % of Final Grade
Assignment(Including Essay): Students will be expected to complete a substantial level three essay on their choice from a range of topics that will encompass key themes and issues arising from critical theory in animation. n/a Graded No

60
Assignment(Including Essay): Students will be invited to reflect on a theme in thinking about animation and frame their response using core reading. This will serve as a platform for the more fully developed final essay. n/a Graded No

40

Carry forward of passed components
Yes
 
Resit In Terminal Exam
Autumn No
Please see Student Jargon Buster for more information about remediation types and timing. 
Feedback Strategy/Strategies

• Feedback individually to students, post-assessment
• Group/class feedback, post-assessment

How will my Feedback be Delivered?

Written feedback will be available on all submitted mid-term and final essays, and students are invited to attend consultation to discuss this further. There will also usually be some general feedback notes either in class or on BrightSpace. General consultation is available on a weekly basis for all students throughout the trimester, including during preparation of assessment, but drafts will not be read prior to summative assessment.

Indicative Reading List (subject to change):
Beckman, Karen (ed.), Animating Film Theory, Durham and London: Duke Uni Press, 2014.
Dobson, Nichola, Annabelle Honess Roe, Amy Ratelle and Caroline Ruddell (eds.), The Animation Studies Reader, New York, London, Oxford, New Dehli, Sydney: Bloomsbury, 2019.
Furniss, Maureen, Art in Motion: Animation Aesthetics (revised edition), London, Paris, Rome, Sydney: John Libbey & Co., 2008.
Furniss, Maureen, Animation: The Global History, London: Thames & Hudson, 2017.
Wells, Paul, Understanding Animation, New York and London: Routledge,1998.
Wells, Paul, Animation: Genre and Authorship, London: Wallflower Press, 2007.