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Perspectives on Animation

Module description

This module focuses on the histories and applications of animation across film, TV and the creative industries. Situating animation in various national and critical contexts across the 20^th and early 21^st centuries, the module introduces you to animation histories, genres, and techniques.  Alongside critical and historical perspectives, the module also offers you opportunities to develop your writing and communication skills, digital literacy and creativity through targeted assessments.

Module aims - intentions of the module

1. This module will enable you to situate case study film and TV animation texts within historical, national, and discursive contexts across the 20^th and 21^st centuries, drawing on a variety of national industries, individual artists’ work, arthouse film, popular culture, and the heritage of established studios.
2. The module will motivate you to engage with diverse applications of animation technologies in contemporary film, TV, and visual media cultures, establishing an understanding of how these technologies may be applied within and beyond narrative storytelling, and their impact on audiences.
3. The module will encourage you to analyse the formal aesthetics and narrative properties of individual animation texts, working towards a greater understanding of the significance of animation as a separate artform with a distinct and highly-specialised expressive toolkit.
4. Through a series of assessments, the module will stimulate you to work with archival artefacts, critical theories and technological concepts in order to enrich your knowledge of both animation’s role in popular culture, art and visual expression, and the film and TV industries.

Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)

ILO: Module-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 1. Demonstrate advanced knowledge of the historical evolution of various styles of animation, the technological innovations that led to their establishment and their applications in the broader contexts of film, TV, and visual media.
• 2. Enter critical and theoretical discussions of film, TV, and other animated media and relate these to specific case studies, and their use of animation techniques, narrative properties, and relevant industrial or national contexts.
• 3. Evaluate, compare and contrast primary resources, interconnecting these with animation history across a variety of national markets.
• 4. Demonstrate skills in critically interrogating animated media, its discursive and aesthetic properties, and gained insights into the ways animation operates as an industry and the historical and current approaches of its production.

ILO: Discipline-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 5. Show advanced understanding of animation’s place in film and TV histories, and its contemporary applications in media production.
• 6. Demonstrate an advanced ability to engage with texts and discourses specific to the discipline and interrelate them to issues and discussions across the wider contexts of cultural and intellectual histories.
• 7. Demonstrate advanced ability to analyse animated work and relate it to relevant critical theories and discursive approaches.

ILO: Personal and key skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 8. Demonstrate advanced communication skills and ability to work both individually and in groups.
• 9. Demonstrate advanced capacity to construct a strong and coherent argument, and the ability to write clear and focussed prose, incorporating research findings and interrogating secondary materials in your writing.
• 10. Demonstrate appropriate research skills and proficient data and information retrieval and analysis, and the advanced capability to work with both primary and secondary sources, and archival artefacts.
• 11. Demonstrate comprehensive skills in information and data visualisation, digital literacy and creativity.

Syllabus plan

The module will explore the historical development of animation and select studios as well as relevant contexts and animation techniques. Topics might include: critical and theoretical perspectives, questions of national identity, studies of individual animators’ work, and the evolution of animation as a technology. Case studies might include animation from the early 20^th-century modernist period, films and series produced by established studios, arthouse productions, European and Asian productions, and animations made and exhibited outside family-oriented contexts.

Learning activities and teaching methods (given in hours of study time)

Details of learning activities and teaching methods

Formative assessment

Summative assessment (% of credit)

Details of summative assessment

Details of re-assessment (where required by referral or deferral)

Re-assessment notes

Deferral – If you miss an assessment for certificated reasons judged acceptable by the Mitigation Committee, you will normally be either deferred in the assessment or an extension may be granted. The mark given for a re-assessment taken as a result of deferral will not be capped and will be treated as it would be if it were your first attempt at the assessment.

Referral – If you have failed the module overall (i.e. a final overall module mark of less than 40%) you will be required to submit a further assessment as necessary. If you are successful on referral, your overall module mark will be capped at 40%.

Indicative learning resources - Basic reading

• Animation studies: peer reviewed online journal for animation history and theory. (2006) Valencia, CA: Society for Animation Studies. (journal; multiple essays to be included as set and recommended reading throughout the module)
• Benhamou, E. (2023) Contemporary Disney Animation: Genre, Gender and Hollywood. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
• Johnston, A.R. (2021) Pulses of abstraction: episodes from a history of animation. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
• Roberts, S. (2021) Animation Techniques. Ramsbury: The Crowood Press.
• Rall, H. (2020) Adaptation for animation: transforming literature frame by frame. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press/Taylor & Francis Group.
• Walsh, C. (2020) Stop motion filmmaking: The complete guide to fabrication and animation. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.

• 101 Dalmatians (Geronimi, C. et al. 1961)
• Cowboy Bepop (Shinichir? Watanabe, 1998)
• Das Wunder (Walter Ruttman, 1921)
• Ghost in the Shell (Mamoru Oshii, 1995)
• Lichtspiel Opus I-II (Walter Ruttman, 1922-1924)
• My Life as a Courgette (Claude Barras, 2016)
• Persepolis (Marjane Satrapi, Vincent Paronnaud, 2007)
• Pixar short films including but not limited to: Jack Jack Attack (2005); La Luna (2011); Piper (2016
• Steamboat Willie (1928) (and a selection of short animated films produced by Disney)
• Symphonie diagonal (Viking Eggeling, 1924)
• The Boy and the Heron (Hayao Miyazaki, 2023)
• The Red Turtle (Michaël Dudok de Wit, 2017)
• The Triplettes of Belleville (Sylvain Chomet, 2003)
• Wallace and Grommit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (Nick Park, Steve Box, 2005)
• Wallace & Grommit: Vengeance Most Fowl (Nick Park, Merlin Crossingham, 2024)