Author: Wendy Wang Wang

In this week I have mainly checked two books written by Paul Well:

1. Understanding Animation
2. Animation and America

Through the help of the index, I could look straight on the paragraph talking about my chosen topic ‘Anthropomorphism’ in them. And below are the notes I have made + the relating questions I could think about to research and answer in my essay in different topics:

Key words: Anthropomorphism 

Potential question 1:

How anthropomorphism was structured under the historic background?

Relating to the historic background, Animation and America, p24 points out the influence caused by Second World War and modernity altered the way how humans view their physical and material world. Which encouraging art practice during the period to challenge traditional orthodoxies with constant change, to achieve the revolution and renovation of modernism.

(Quote from any book of the depiction of modernism is needed. )

Correspondingly, anthropomorphic characters support audiences to explore different scenarios through changing identities, metamorphosis, dehumanising and restructuring themselves in the story; without bounding into any industrial orthodoxies, they are living in an uncertain reality and working for the need of gags to structure more possibilities and values. 

Talk about how the abstractions inspire the appearance of anthropomorphic characters. Animation and American, p20, the animator pioneers under the time experiment the limits of graphic space, ‘playing out narration of perception and memory in rapid metamorphosis.’ They play ‘lines, shapes, forms in the enunciation of time, space, weight and flow’ at the same period.

Potential question 2:

How the anthropomorphic characters signify meaning behind political issue?

Animation and American: p22, the abstraction of anthropomorphism in early American animation achieved through developing technologies in the industry, which explores the relationship between humanity and animality and the expression of humans after being challenged. It reflect the possible lack of humanity in society, philosophy and mechanisation.

Films: Bambi (1942), Animal farm (1954), Watership Down (1978), The Lorax (1972) (Understanding Animation p63) The tale of the Fox (1937).

The revolt of the toys (1945) anti-nazi film, reflecting the oppression of the wartime Nazi

The king and the mockingbird (1980).

The turning point (2020), showing the destruction of habitat through animal perspective. 

Relating back to the benefits of adding anthropomorphic gags to the film to talk about why they can easily be understood. Such as building up connections through performances, no political references under the sensitive topics, animal behaviour is an internal sources to be read with foibles and flaws in the film. 

Potential question 3:

How anthropomorphic characters help to create gags in the film??

However, their representation as ‘animal forms’ work well for gags in films.

Understanding Animation: p129: In the early ‘trick’ films, audiences were mostly unallied with characters which create random humours as gags in a story with a lack of continuity and empathy. However, the added human personalities of anthropomorphic characters allows audiences to be emotionally attached by the way how stories are being told and how their characteristics are being expressed with freedom. 

Examples (Case study textual Analysis by using key elements) in early films: 

Key elements of building up personalised characters in films include:

1. Eye contact between characters and audiences to break up the 4th wall. 
2. Facial expressions to deliver emotions and expressions.
3. Recognised physical poses in the set.
4. Clear motivation set and acted by the anthropomorphic character itself within narrations.
5. Physical rhythms show indicate the attitude of the character.
6. The character is taking responsibility of the film as an actor.

Windsor McCay

Mosquito in ‘How a mosquito operates (1912)’

Dinosaur in’ Gertie the Dinosaur (1914)’

Meanwhile, in Disney films, Walt’s seek for anti-stereotype of traditional gags functioned through the use of ‘caricature’ and ‘exaggeration’ in anthropomorphic characters to address human flaws and human foibles. The anthropomorphism helps to build up the natural shortcomings which brings up comedy from internal sources in the film, in which this feature had extended from McCay’s animation. 

Hence, Disney tried to adopt the working process which used by Windsor McCay in Ub Iwerks characters, instead of drawing from one image to the next one, he tended to add ‘in-between’ in the middle of two ‘extreme’ poses. (Animation and American, P21).

Potential question 4:

How do Anthropomorphic characters been designed??

P23, early animation uses Anthropomorphic characters include:

1. Gertie the Dinosaur 
2. Felix the Cat
3. Mickey Mouse

Disney company has developed the concept into achieving the hyper-realism in their future work. However, scholars Patrick D. Murphy and Richard Schickel argues these characters hide their natural terrors or wildness through cuteness, joke and musical cues in the performance. 

Understanding animation p203: character designs within Anthropomophrism in Disney films 

Potential question 5:

The benefits and drawbacks of anthropomorphism??

In next week I will try to develop potential questions listed above into a draft of the essay structure and let the lecturer to look at it to gain feedback. Meanwhile, I will be looking at specific case study with doing textual analysis to answer each question I have set. Beside, I will be looking at the other books I borrowed from the school library.

In this week’s session we have been introduced the main points of structuring the thesis of the course, and here is my notes:

Due to I was interesting in the topic of anthropomorphic creatures, I have been recommended to read essays written by the author Claire Molloy online:

Meanwhile I start borrowing library books which connect this concept to the animation.

In this week’s session, our lecturer roughly talked about the structure of writing the research proposal in this term and the topic we could potentially think about academically.

Here is the note I wrote in the online class:

During the class the lecturer mentioned the technical domain within 3D is not considered a topic for academic writing, hence I am considering choosing concept as my theme. For now, I am thinking of how ‘Anthropomorphism’ has been delivered through different animation films and how anthropomorphic characters relate to their mise-en-scene, connotations and story background.

Here are some case studies I was also thinking:

1: The boy and the beast (anthropomorphic animals).

2: Wall-E (anthropomorphic robots)

3: Toy Story (anthropomorphic toys)

4: Inside Out (anthropomorphic emotions)

Here are some potential topics I think can be discussed in my future thesis:

• The source of anthropomorphism, early work.
• The psychology behind using anthropomorphic characters.
• The creation of anthropomorphiccharacterss in animation films.

Also, in the conclusion of the future thesis, I think I can use the topic to link back my own concept work.

I also found that in the book Understanding Animation, Paul Well writes that the anthropomorphism used in McCay’s Gertie the Dinosaur informs the traditional animation produced by Walt Disney on page 15. Page 28 talks about how the early animation film Bambi applied the anthropomorphic character to move beyond the realistic traditions. Page 63 mentions how Starewicz used anthropomorphic characters in his film to exaggerate the characteristics of the rat and deliver a strong natural feeling to audiences’ emotional memory.

In google scholar, this concept has been referred to animation films in lots of writings which I am expect to read and research and see how the others to discuss them: