Summary of Reading - Understanding Animation

Abstract Animation
- shape or forms moving in illogical continuity
- primal: seeks to represent inarticulable personal feelings beyond the orthodoxies of language
- rejection of rationalism and emerging from the unconscious mind

- philosophic and spiritual

- subjective interpretation

Sound
- distinguish diegetic and non-diegetic
- interpreted through the feelings it inspires
- specific signifier for the purpose of narration and characterisation
- Some conventional use of non-diegetic sound: reinforce naturalism (Disney), accentuate comic imperative (Warner Bros.).

Choreography
- Laban's movement thematics: formalist approach to define mood and meaning
- observing people to discern the need for and aims and intentions of their movement
- 'focuses on the flow of the weight of the body in time and space, articulating the effort action'
- Depicting conflict through juxtaposition of rhythm and function in any sequence

'Experimental Animation has a strong relationship to music and, indeed, it may be suggested that if music could be visualised it would look like colours and shapes moving through time with differing rhythms, movements and speeds' (Wells, 2006)

Source:

Wells, P. (2006 [1998]) Understanding Animation, King's Lynn: Routledge.