# Animation Studies [Wikipedia Link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_for_Animation_Studies) ( 1987 – present ) ## Description Interdisciplinary field studying animation's history, techniques, and aesthetics on its own terms rather than as a subset of live-action cinema; includes the historiography of national animation traditions, craft-based and abstract animation, and methods for reading the animated image. ## Key Tags #animation #media-studies #film-historiography #german-animation ## Essential Works - [[A Reader in Animation Studies]] - Jayne Pilling's field-defining edited anthology consolidating early critical methods in the discipline ## Details Much of the material gathered here centers on animation historiography and methodology, with a concentration on Weimar-era German silhouette and abstract animation (Lotte Reiniger, Walter Ruttmann) and on how animation history gets told, reconstructed, and anachronistically reread. ### Key Theorists - [[Jayne Pilling]] - editor of the field-defining *A Reader in Animation Studies* - [[Rada Bieberstein]] - interdisciplinary approaches and methods in animation historiography - [[Erwin Feyersinger]] - interdisciplinary approaches and methods in animation historiography - [[Tashi Petter]] - anachronism and film-society reconstruction as methods for doing animation history - [[Lilith Acadia]] - orientalism and progressivism in Lotte Reiniger's work - [[Noga Gahl Wizansky]] - handicraft and abstraction in Weimar Germany animation - [[Paul Taberham]] - cognitive science applied to avant-garde cinema and animation; author of *Poetics of Animation* ### Exemplary Practitioners #### Pre-cinema Animation Pioneers - [[Émile Reynaud]] - praxinoscope and Théâtre Optique, the direct ancestor of projected animation - [[Joseph Plateau]] - phenakistiscope and studies of persistence of vision #### Direct and Abstract Animation - [[Lotte Reiniger]] - German silhouette-animation pioneer, subject of most of the historiographic work gathered here - [[Walter Ruttmann]] - German abstract-film and animation pioneer - [[Oskar Fischinger]] - abstract animation set to music, and experiments in drawn sound - [[Norman McLaren]] - direct animation and sound drawn onto the film strip - [[Len Lye]] - direct film painted and scratched onto stock - [[Harry Smith]] - hand-painted and collage animation - [[Viking Eggeling]] - abstract scroll animation, *Symphonie Diagonale* - [[Storm de Hirsch]] - hand-etched direct animation - [[Mary Ellen Bute]] - abstract animation and oscilloscope-generated imagery set to music - [[James Whitney]] - slow mandalic abstract animation - [[Jordan Belson]] - abstract cosmological animation - [[Robert Breer]] - frame-by-frame collage animation and kinetic sculpture - [[Nikolai Voinov]] - Soviet drawn-sound animation #### Computer Animation Pioneers - [[John Whitney Sr.]] - mechanical analogue computer animation and early digital motion graphics - [[John Whitney Jr.]] - early digital film effects work - [[Jim Blinn]] - foundational rendering techniques and the JPL planetary animations - [[Ken Knowlton]] - BEFLIX and early computer-generated images at Bell Labs - [[Lillian Schwartz]] - computer-generated film made in collaboration with engineers at Bell Labs - [[Dan Sandin]] - built the Sandin Image Processor, co-founder of the Electronic Visualization Laboratory - [[Tom DeFanti]] - the GRASS language, co-founder of the Electronic Visualization Laboratory - [[Jane Veeder]] - computer graphics and video made in Chicago - [[Larry Cuba]] - algorithmic computer animation - [[Ed Emshwiller]] - among the earliest artist-made computer animation - [[Stan VanDerBeek]] - collage animation, the Movie-Drome, and early computer film - [[Adriano Abbado]] - MIT Media Lab research on perceptual correspondence between abstract animation and synthetic sound - [[Robert Darroll]] - computer animation and mythological abstraction #### Stop-motion and Puppet Animation - [[Brothers Quay]] - stop-motion puppet films in decayed constructed interiors #### Studio and State-Sponsored Animation - [[Hans Fischerkoesen]] - animator whose Nazi-era films raise questions of resistance and subversion within state-sponsored animation #### Contemporary and Post-photographic Animation - [[Zbigniew Rybczynski]] - optically printed compositing, including *Tango* - [[Takeshi Murata]] - datamoshed animation and later 3D-rendered still life - [[Thorsten Fleisch]] - camera-less, physically generated animated imagery ### Related Concepts - [[Media Studies]] - broader disciplinary frame animation studies draws its methods from - [[Puppet Studies]] - adjacent field concerned with stop-motion and object animation ### Creative and Technical Practices - [[Drawn on Film]] - direct/abstract animation practice closely tied to the historiography gathered here ### Associated Movements or Institutions - [[Society for Animation Studies]] - founded 1987 by Harvey Deneroff; convenes the field's main annual conference (active 1987–present) - *Animation: An Interdisciplinary Journal*, annual SAS conference ## References ### Primary Sources Bibliography [Journal of Animation Studies](https://journal.animationstudies.org/) ### Secondary Sources Bibliography *"Resistance and Subversion in Animated Films of the Nazi Era: The Case of Hans Fischerkoesen."* [Animation World Network](https://www.awn.com/mag/issue1.7/articles/moritz1.7.html), n.d. Acadia, Lilith. "'Lover of Shadows': Lotte Reiniger's Innovation, Orientalism, and Progressivism." *Oxford German Studies* 50, no. 2 (2021): 150–68. [https://doi.org/10.1080/00787191.2021.1927377](https://doi.org/10.1080/00787191.2021.1927377). Bieberstein, Rada, and Erwin Feyersinger. "The Ever-Expanding Scope of Animation Historiography: A Discussion of Interdisciplinary Approaches and Methods." *Animation* 17, no. 1 (2022): 10–25. [https://doi.org/10.1177/17468477221080108](https://doi.org/10.1177/17468477221080108). Goergen, Jeanpaul. *Walter Ruttmann: Eine Dokumentation*. 1989. Petter, Tashi. "'One Out of Harmony with Her Own Time': Lotte Reiniger, Anachronism and Doing Animation History through Film Society Reconstruction." *Animation* 17, no. 1 (2022): 70–87. [https://doi.org/10.1177/17468477221087164](https://doi.org/10.1177/17468477221087164). Pilling, Jayne. *A Reader In Animation Studies*. Indiana University Press, 1998. [https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/3/edited_volume/book/40033](https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/3/edited_volume/book/40033). Rochester, Katherine. "Visual Music and Kinetic Ornaments." *Feminist Media Histories* 7, no. 1 (2021): 115–46. [https://doi.org/10.1525/fmh.2021.7.1.115](https://doi.org/10.1525/fmh.2021.7.1.115). *"Scissors Make Films."* n.d. Wizansky, Noga Gahl. *Crosscut: Handicraft and Abstraction in Weimar Germany*. PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2004. [ProQuest](https://search.proquest.com/openview/be429ee450415a0dd8cb914ec83061b0/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=18750&diss=y).