In this week, I have focused on reading an online journey about the anthropomorphic characters in pre-war and computer animations, and I have made some notes for my thesis proposal:
P247: 6th century Greece, anyhropos=human, morphē=shape or form,
-anthropomorphic personification = animated aesthetics [Patrick Power (2008: 37)]
–animation is evolving, while the frequency of anthropomorphism never had been destabilised. Especially there used to be a strong anthropomorphic approach to test out the matching functions and visual possibilities.
-computer animation helped the anthropomorphism to reach an extraordinary level.
-these characters function as narrative agents to deliver informations in the digital worlds, creating ‘fullness’ through their existence and residency.
-contemporary consumer-brand culture
–main stream computer animated film are more broader than the pre-war era animation on the anthropomorphic side. Where audiences can identify human traits in animal figures directly with a mix of fantasy and reality.
-the connection between the digital constructs of anthropomorphism and diegetic world.
P248
-article argues how computer animated film exploited the non-human morphe elements of its character.
-aesthetic exploration, dilution, exaggeration, satirising of the machinations of the human condition through devices of allegory and analogy, symbolism and signification.
-‘pragmatic’ solutions, ‘anthropocentric’ explanatory concept. To show how humans are able to make sense of the deeply enigmatic and often hostile world in which they inhabit through the ascription of human connotation.
“作为视觉和行为熟悉性的叙事代理人，动画中的拟人化角色确实允许通过对心理、意图、行为、社会文化层级的夸张、扭曲、讽刺，以及通过比喻、象征、象征主义的修辞手法对人类状况的阴暗面进行审视和讽刺。因此，这样有意义的拟人化角色作为‘实用的解决方案’，成为了一种‘以人为中心’的解释概念。它帮助人们理解并解释他们所处的这个既深奥又常常充满敌意的世界，并通过人为的联想来加以解释。”
(这段话指出了为什么人们会倾向于通过“拟人化”的方式去理解复杂和陌生的世界，因为它既能让我们在心理上接受并熟悉这些现象，也能够帮助我们去解释和“驾驭”那些看起来深不可测甚至敌对的世界。)
–>political animation films
-anthropomorphism adds attribution of human like qualities to non-human characters, and so they move seamlessly in an animated space to connotate implicit meanings. Animators kept reviving them to evoke audiences empathy and compassion.
与动画中拟人化的能力（作为视觉现象或拟像）相关的，是赋予非人类（通常是动物）角色以人类特质的含义集合。这种特质的赋予让这些角色能够有意地行动，并在动画空间中无缝地融入其中，一直被理论化为角色设计的一个基本要求。拟人化是一种再现策略，不断被动画师复兴以激发观众的认同、兴趣、同理心与同情心，从而更好地观察所看到的动画形象。
这段话的意思是：
- 拟人化的角色设计不仅仅是让角色更具有人类特质，它也承载了大量的“意义”或“隐含的意义”。
- 这种做法是为了让观众能够更容易地在心理上接受和同情角色，让角色可以自由地行动，并且让观众能与之产生共鸣。
- 从认知角度，这是一种叙事和情感上的“通道”或“策略”，动画师通过不断运用拟人化，唤起观众的兴趣、认同感和同理心。
- 最后引用了Torben Grodal的观点来支撑这个说法。1997:89
Cognitivist Torben Grodal (1997:89), for example, argues that:
When watching a visual representation of phenomena without any centring anthropomorphic actants (characters), we often ‘lose interest’ owing to lack of emotional motivation or the cognitive 感知的 analysis of the perceived, a fact which many makers of experimental films have discovered when presenting their films to a mass audience
Anthropomorphic actants help to build emotional motivation, cognitive analysis of the perceived. Especially this had been proved by experimental film makers.
–>the build up of gags
251:
-the assumption of human activity is the blueprint of non-human objects are being altered by computer animated film, as the latter focused into the morphe as an essential for, It takes the centre stage, and formed the magnetism of the morphe itself. (Beyond traditional performance styles)
-examples: cars 2
-anatomical coherency/ projection of emotion, personality, charm
-support our emotional investment over the course of a feature film
- in computer animation, the anthropomorphic character tend to build up their authentic form of the non-human, but also shed any acquired human like characteristics or identity, which embraces their true morphe.
252
–Therianthropic comes from the Greek “thēríon” (wild animal or beast) and “anthrōpos” (human being).
It refers to the blending or transformation between human and animal forms.
255
-animated film unravels the tensions and connections between anthroposophy and morphe, the animate and inanimate, subjects and objects.
-focalization describes the angle of vision ‘from which the life or the action is looked at’.
-it helps to create a world that is aesthetically and stylistically anecdotal, a virtual reality emphasises the anthropomorphic individual’s activities, movements and viewpoints.
-the anthropomorphism in the computer animated film era enfolded in a wider discourse of fictional world creation, transmission and representation.
-its diegetic consciousness is inflected by it’s morphe, which is as a non-human to build up the world.
256
“…function of the anthropomorph as a focalizer of the action in soliciting such narrational modes.”
–>翻译：
“因此，每个片段的视觉体验源自于事件在叙事层面上的即时性，并通过拟人角色作为行动的聚焦者的功能，激发了这种叙事模式。”
解析：
这里强调，拟人角色不仅是故事的参与者，也是推动叙事的焦点，让观众更深入地体验故事。
–morphe eyes central to how the scene is transmitted, their own specific focalizes angle of vision is animated to be the spectator;s own viewing position as a privilege.
–virtual camera in computer animation: it can be operated in anywhere it chooses, an intangible and abstracted presence (Jones, 2007:236). Due to its status as physical apparatus, it permits the relocation of subjectivity onto the anthropomorphis ‘eye’ in the direst instance, it brings an animated self-consciousness to a non-human character. Also, it could define time and space, or ethereally beyond it.
257
–the point of view (eye) of anthropomorphic characters created through virtual camera becomes a navigator of the virtual space.
–breaking with the normal conditions of human subjective experience allows the audience to achieve an open flow of ‘hallucinogenic 引起幻觉的’ perception that can be said to be experienced by objects that are situated in their position of uncontaminated objectivity .
-a pure vision from the object without being distorted by the human objectivity.
• Giuliana Bruno (20o2:56) virtual tour ‘cine city’ the spectator is shifted from a contemplative to a mobilized anthropomorphic state in a virtual space
• Gilles Deleuze ‘gaseous perception’ 258
气态化（gaseous）指的是动画电影中通过多主体视角、动态的、去中心化的场面调度，营造出一种流动感和不确定性。
这种风格打破了传统的人类中心叙事和固定视角，使观众体验到拟人化角色的“非人性”本质。
-Ratatouille & Bee movie
-involving multiple sequences
-spetacles derives from a boundless shifting composition and the connections between multiple diegetic points.
-William brown (2012:268): the gaseous movies focus on the unsold perspectives, escaping from human perceptions, emphasising the momentum of subjectivity as both de-centring force and chaotic impact.
259
“With human characters and their perspective featuring as merely a component of the image, the attraction of computer-animated film anthropomorphism, then, involves the spectators’ ability to momentarily reject their own ánthrōpos, cross species, and take an embodied (rat’s-eye or bee’s eye) tour of the virtual world in the skin of another kind.”
• 在动画中，人类角色和视角往往只是画面的一部分，因此计算机动画中的拟人化吸引观众的地方在于：观众可以暂时放下自己的“人类身份”，跨越物种，像老鼠或者蜜蜂那样“代入”，以“非人类的皮肤”去体验虚拟世界。
“Through the animator’s exploitation of non-human morphē over that of the figure’s human connotation of ánthrōpos, the anthropomorph of computer-animated films ultimately becomes the pinnacle of putting ‘perception into things’ into ‘matter’, the pure vision of a non-human eye (Deleuze, 1986: 83).“
• 通过动画创作者将“非人类形态（morphē）”置于“人类特征（ánthrōpos）”之上，动画中的拟人化角色最终成为了“把感知放进事物中”的巅峰，即转化为“物质”，成就了一种“非人类之眼”的纯粹视角。
260
The passage highlights how computer-animated films use “plasmatiness”—a term rooted in Eisenstein’s ideas of fluidity—to emphasize the dynamic interplay between anthropomorphic characters and their fictional worlds. This allows human and non-human elements to merge, shift, and constantly reconfigure, creating new power relations and fresh storytelling possibilities. (Eisenstein, 1988: 21)
这段文字强调了计算机动画电影如何利用“流动性”（plasmatiness）——源自艾森斯坦的流动性概念——突出拟人化角色与虚拟世界之间的动态互动。这种方式使人类与非人类元素得以不断交融、转换和重组，从而创造了新的权力关系和全新的叙事可能性。
-it allows film makers to express the digital world without impediment, in a range of proximities and observation points, by letting the spectator to see things differently through the inhabiting and embodiment of space and place.
-the fictional world is turned into an open, multi dimensional state of omni-directionality in which no angle is privileged.
-Eisenstein’s notion ‘plasnaricness’.
Anthropos and morphe can intersect and collide to form new power relations and anthropomorphic constructs.
-dynamic digital space has been included by the anthropomophism
-the “plasmatiness” of digital animation (where boundaries between human and non-human, animate and inanimate, can constantly shift) allows the spectator to experience the virtual world as fluid and constantly changing.
Rather than passively watching, the spectator actively navigates the space, shaped by the anthropomorph’s shifting viewpoint.