{"id":315,"date":"2022-11-29T10:43:10","date_gmt":"2022-11-29T10:43:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/glare\/?p=315"},"modified":"2024-06-27T14:27:39","modified_gmt":"2024-06-27T14:27:39","slug":"the-basics-what-is-animation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/glare\/the-basics-what-is-animation\/","title":{"rendered":"The basics: What is \u201canimation\u201d?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Each of the words that make up the name of this resource (gender<\/em><\/a>, language<\/em><\/a> and animation<\/em>) may seem like they are easily understood, and have simple meanings that most people would recognise and agree on. But if we dig a little deeper, it quickly becomes apparent that each of them can be (and has been) endlessly debated by scholars and the general public alike. In this first post on the basics, I will look at some definitions of animation.<\/p>\n

Animation is perhaps the easiest concept of the three to pin down, and the least contentious. Khun and Westwell (2020) give two definitions for\u00a0animation:<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThe use of a range of non-photographic methods, including hand drawing, silhouette animation<\/span>, cel-animation<\/span>, model work (known as stop-motion animation<\/span>), and computer-generated imagery (CGI) to create film images.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFilms produced using animation<\/span> techniques, often given the label cartoons, and aimed at a young audience.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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The second of these is fairly straightforward, and largely overlaps with common understandings of what an\u00a0animation<\/em> is. The first suggests a very wide range of different artistic and production techniques that can be used to create animations. Even before film, flip-books\u00a0and other gadgets<\/a> could create the illusion of movement in images. And even in films with no CGI whatsoever, special effects, make up, costumes, optical illusions, and even decisions around how to frame a shot or what perspective to film from mean that there is a layer of artificiality between the people, objects or places being shown and what the viewer perceives.<\/p>\n

So the idea that CGI constitutes a form of animation might make it hard to categorise certain films, though as Khun and Westwell point out, hybrid forms of film have existed for almost as long as film itself. For instance, in some films animated sequences are interspersed with live-action sequences, or hand-drawn animation is used to augment filmed material, as in the ‘penguin’ sequence in the classic film Mary Poppins<\/em> (Stevenson, 1964):<\/p>\n