The 24th Annual Society for Animation Studies Conference will be held June 25-27, 2012 at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. The Call for Papers notes:

The theme of this year’s conference, ‘The Animation Machine’, reflects the wide range of processes, technologies, histories and structures in animation. As movement is an essential aspect of animation, whatever creates that movement may constitute an animation machine and one could conceive that animation is itself a machine. The animation machine can be considered from both the production process and the end product. Therefore, it refers to the machines of animation presentation, be these pre-20th century animation devices, movie or video screens, or even automata. The animation machine also relates to the multitude of animation production processes – from animating technologies (animation stands, cameras, computers), through to the animator’s individual creative practice. Ultimately, the animation machine can be described quite broadly and we welcome your own interpretations.

With the centenary of Australian animation approaching, the 2012 conference will also provide an opportunity to highlight some of Australia’s animation heritage. The conference will coincide with the Melbourne International Animation Festival (MIAF) and a number of crossover events are planned.

Proposals, which will accepted through December 12th, are invited “on a wide range of animation topics on all aspects of animation history, theory and criticism.” (The Call for Papers can be found here.)

This year’s keynote speakers include: Thomas Lamarre, Professor of East Asian Studies, Art History and author most recently of The Anime Machine: a Media Theory of Animation (University of Minnesota Press, 2009) and Robogarage Co., Ltd. CEO and Research Associate Professor of The University of Tokyo Tomotaka Takahashi who, “creates, designs, and invents unique and original humanoids.”

While you’re at it, check out the Society for Animation Studies website here.

I’m a bit late posting on this, but it’s never too late to acknowledge Pierre Floquet receiving the Society for Animation Studies’ 2011 McLaren-Lambart Award “for the Best Scholarly Book on animation” for his Le langage comique de Tex Avery, published in 2009 byL’Harmattan.  Floquet, who’s on the faculty of IPB, Bordeaux University. His 1996 PhD thesis was “on linguistics applied to cinema, focusing on Tex Avery’s comic language.”

The McLaren-Lambart Award is named in memory of Norman McLaren and Evelyn Lambart and derives from the National Film Board of Canada’s initial involvement in the Award.  The Society’s announcement notes:

This book, published in French …, is a detailed analysis of the cinematic nuances at play in the cartoons directed by Tex Avery at MGM from 1942-1951.  With remarkably complex insights into Avery’s comic language, the author distills what at first glance might seem like a director’s reliance on coarse gags and repetitive formulae into a sophisticated colloquy with moviegoers.  The manner in which Avery engages viewers on the nature of cinema has always been disarming, played for laughs instead of reflection, but French film scholars recognized him as an important auteur as early as the 1960s.  This recent book in many ways is a fulfillment of this earlier recognition, a culminating study of Tex Avery’s influential body of work.  Pierre Floquet’s writing on the concept of distantiation, from Althusser and especially Brecht, is essential.  It points to a genuine concern with the form of the language of cartoons that is just as vital in any consideration of modern animation as it is with Avery’s œuvre.

Bravo Pierre!

Charles daCosta (my counterpart at the main campus of the Savannah College of Art and Design) (left) standing with Gan Sheuo Hui  (Kyoto Seika University) enjoying the view of Athens during a coffee break opening day of the conference.

This year’s Society for Animation Studies conference, “The Rise of the Creative Economy: Digital Animation, Visual FXS, and Allied Technologies,” March 18-20, was hosted by the Athens campus of University of Indianapolis, under the guidance of Romana Turina. I was there to present a paper entitled “Television Animation on the Cusp of the American Animation Renaissance,” part of a book I’m writing on the origins of the current animation revival in America. But I, along with many others, were also there for the camaraderie and, of course, to be in Athens. It was a somewhat more modest event than the last two conferences, but it had its own distinctive character. Then, again, as the founder of SAS, I’m a somewhat prejudiced in these matters. In any case, I thought I would take this opportunity to share a few pictures I took.

Here I am with Mohamed Ghazala (Minia University), Director of ASIFA Egypt, who proudly took part in his country’s recent revolution. He was also happy that Egyptian animator Ihab Shaker was chosen by ASIFA-International to design this year’s International Animation Day poster, the first time someone from Africa or the Arab world has been so honored. ASIFA-Egypt seems be a particularly active chapter and Mohamed also seemed interested in hosting a future SAS conference. (A conference in Egypt seems like a no brainer to me.)

The ever charismatic Paul Wells  (Loughborough University) in conversation with Marinchevska Nadezhda (Institute for Art Studies, Sofia). Paul’s talk was called “’Let them Eat Sushi!!’ — The Seven Deadly Sins of Animation Screenwriting”; he also announced that the first issue of the new journal he’s editing, Animation Practice Process and Production, is finally in galleys. (I have an article in a future issue based on a paper I wrote with my wife, Vickie, for last year’s SAS conference.) Marinchevska, who spoke on “Metamorphosis — Between Mythological Rebirth and Modernity,” last  attended an SAS conference in 1990 at Carleton University, in Ottawa, when her country was still part of the Soviet bloc. Having a conference in Athens certainly made it easier for people like her and Mohamed Ghazala to attend.

Kirsten Thompson (left) from Wayne State University, who is currently writing a book on Color and Classical Cel Animation. At right is Laura Ivins-Hulley, a doctoral student at Indiana University, who spoke on “Narrowcasting Feminism — MTV’s Daria.”

Javad Khajavi. a graduate student at Tarbiat Modares University, in conversation with David Williams. At the end of last year, Queen Elizabeth II appointed him to “the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire “For services to Media Studies in the North East,” which may very well be a first for someone in animation studies. Javad’s paper was “Codes of Reality, Borders of Illusion: A Social Semiotic Study of Reality in Animated Documentary.”

Mark Langer (left), Carleton University, Ottawa, spoke on “Walt Disney’s Post-Death Authorship,” with Sheridan College’s Tony Tarantini, who talked about “Pedagogic Integrity: Mediating the Institutional Mandate, Student Expectations and Industry Demands.”

Ann Owen, of University College Falmouth, who spoke on “Digital Animation and the Accidental Mark” with Charles daCosta who, in lieu of presenting a paper this year, moderated several panels.

Last but not least, tireless conference organizer Romana Turina, who also took time out to present a paper on “Animation screenwriting — Visual Language and the Translation of Emotions.”

Anyway, I look forward to next year in Melbourne.

Forget the financial crisis in Greece, as the country prepares to not only host the 23rd Annual Society for Animation Studies Conference, March 18-20, 2011, but two animation festivals within a month of each other. The first , which is being held in collaboration with the SAS Conference, is the 6th edition of Animfest Athens, March 17-20, put on by the European Animation Center. The festival, which includes “retrospectives, tributes, master classes, speeches, exhibitions and installations,” is still soliciting entries of of short, student and commissioned films until December 31.

Then there’s the new BE THERE! Corfu Animation Festival, April 7-10, 2011, in Corfu. It is being held in collaboration with Ionian University’s Department of Audio & Visual Art. The festival is accepting entries (short films and graduation films) until January 10, 2011.

That’s me in the middle, after my wife Vickie and I gave our paper at the SAS Conference at the Edinburgh College of Art, sitting between Binary Fable’s Helen Jackson (panel moderator on left) and fellow panelist Colleen Montgomery from the University of British Columbia. (This and other photos are by Van Norris, of the University of Portsmouth, who generously allowed me to download them from his Facebook page for use here.)

Early last month, my wife Vickie and I attended Animation Evolution, the 22nd Annual Society for Animation Studies conference, where we presented a paper, “Crossing Boundaries: Communities of Practice in Animation and Live-Action Filmmaking.” This was our first collaboration, something which came as a surprise to both of us, as after 23 years of marriage we belatedly discovered that our professional interests actually overlapped. Basically, we used social theory to take a look at the ways animation and live-action filmmakers  see themselves and each other, and how technology in the form of motion capture has affected things. (Vickie is pictured above along with fellow panelist Brian Fagence, of the University of Glamorgan.)

It was a somewhat strange and wonderful experience for me, as Vickie had witnessed the birth of SAS when I started it in 1987 and even brought our new-born daughter, Allegra, to the first conference at UCLA in 1989. Over the years, she helped me edit my writings, including my Animation Report newsletter. However, it was an offhand comment she made regarding my posting about Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox that led to our collaboration, which I hope we will be able to repeat more than once.

This year’s conference was probably the largest, at least in terms of papers presented and the quality certainly did not suffer because of that. If there was any trend evident it was in regards to the increasing use of motion capture (which included the paper Vickie and I gave). But I did not and could not properly sample the wide variety of presentations, so I can only provide some random thoughts, observations and photo captions.

Clare Kitson gave the opening keynote address. She is the author of Yuri Norstein and Tale of Tales: An Animator’s Journey and British Animation: The Channel 4 Factor; the latter deals with her stint at Channel 4 commissioning animated shorts and series which sparked a golden age of British animation; it was also the topic of her talk. One thing that struck me was her observation that she noticed a number of the experimental filmmakers she worked with have shown up with prominent credits on films from the likes of Pixar and DreamWorks; this only goes to show that if your ambition is to work for a major Hollywood studio, it doesn’t hurt to do your own thing.

One of most unusual papers was by Jessica Hemmings (seen here with Edinburgh College of Art colleague Jonathan Murray) whose talk on “Textile & Animation Theory: Who Needs It?” stirred an unusual amount of interest among conference goers.

Heather Holian, of the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, who talked about “Art, Animation and the Collaborative Process,” whose interest in the collaborative nature of studio animation is not unlike my interests regarding animation labor.

Pierre Floquet, of  Bordeaux University, gave one of a number of talks touching on the digital revolution that has affected both live-action and animation in recent years. Specifically, his paper, “Actors in Sin City’s Animated Fantasy: Avatars, Aliens, or Cinematic Dead-ends?, discussed what happens to actors in an animated environment.

With Vickie taking a quick side trip on Saturday, I went out to dinner with Tony Tarantini, of Sheridan College (left), and Van Norris (right). I previously blogged (here) about Tony’s comments about the motivations behind James Cameron’s assertion that motion capture is not animation.

Here’s conference organizer extraordinaire Nichola Dobson at the Saturday Conference party. Otto Alder is on the left. As someone who has helped organize several past SAS conferences, I cannot say enough about what a terrific job she did.

Prolific author Paul Wells, of Loughborough University, who gave the closing keynote speech, “Another Fine Messi: Animation, Sport and Theorising Fascination,” is seen here at the conference party. Paul is certainly one of the more charismatic personalities in animation studies and his closing address did nothing to dispel this myth.

Australia’s Alan Cholondenko speaking on “(The) Death (of) the Animator, or: The Felicity of Felix, Part III: Death and the Death of Death.”

Charles daCosta, my colleague from the Savannah campus of the Savannah College of Art and Design; his paper, “Who’s Out There: Halas, the Relevance of Oral Traditions and the Animated Documentary.” Charles not only ably assisted me in organizing the 2009 Atlanta conference, he took over my job when I had to go in for surgery, for which I cannot thank him enough.

Finally, many, many thanks to Nichola Dobson and the wonderful people at the Edinburgh College of Art for organizing and hosting a wonderful conference, and to Van Norris for allowing me to reprint his photos.

Animation Evolution, the 22nd Society for Animation Studies conference, which will hold forth between July 9-11, and is being hosted by the Edinburgh College of Art, is coming up shortly, and I will be there to present a paper I am writing with my wife, Vickie. As someone who has been involved with the Society from its beginnings, I must admit to being a bit prejudiced, but for animation scholars and some filmmakers, it seems like the place you want to be.

Animation Evolution maybe the busiest of all SAS conferences, at least in terms of papers being presented — I counted 78, which is almost twice that of the first SAS conference back in 1989, and even more than last year’s event which I organized.  There are papers on such topics as Guinea Coast Animation, Animated Gay Porn, Soviet Animation of Brezhnev Period, The Nintendo Wii, Motion Capture, Anij in Ghana , Music and Norman McLaren, as well as panels on Animated Documentaries, Animation in Iran and Theorising Animation and Death.

The paper Vickie and I will be giving, “Crossing Boundaries: Communities of Practise in Animation and Live-Action Filmmaking,” is scheduled for Friday, 15:45-17:00, as part of a panel on “Live Action and Digital Cinema” (we’re talking about how digital technologies have enabled live-action directors to do animation).

In addition to the paper sessions, the conference opens Friday with a roundtable session on “Norman McClaren’s Legacy,” which looks forward to “the centenary of Scotland’s most famous animator in 2014.” That evening there is a retrospective of Scottish Animation presented by the Scottish Animation Network at the Filmhouse.

The closing keynote address will be given by Paul Wells, Director of the Animation Academy at Loughborough University; Paul is easily one of the most prolific and influential writers on animation. His books include Understanding Animation (which I have used in teaching animation aesthetics), Animation: Genre & Authorship, and Drawing for Animation’ (with Joanna Quinn); in addition, he will be editing the forthcoming Animation Practice, Production & Process, a new “journal presenting, analysing and advancing how animation is created and shown” to be published by Intellect.

So, if you’re planning to be in the Edinburgh area early next month, by all means come.

“Animation Evolution,” the next SAS conference will be held at Scotland’s Edinburgh College of Art, July 9-11, 2010.  The conference blog is up and running, and is where you can find its Call for Papers. The conference is  being organized by Nichola Dobson, who is also editor of Animation Studies, the Society’s online journal.

Keynote speakers will be Clare Kitson,and Paul Wells. Kitson, whose work as the pioneering commissioner of animation for Britain’s Channel 4 created a mini-Golden Age of British animation is recounted in her latest book, British Animation: The Channel 4 Factor;  she is also the author of Yuri Norstein and Tale of Tales: an Animator’s Journey. Wells is the author of numerous books on animation, including such standard texts as Understanding Animation and Animation and America; his most recent books include Drawing for Animation, written with Joanna Quinn and Les Mills.

The Call for Papers notes:

Deadline for panel submissions: 8 January 2010. …

Membership in the Society for Animation Studies is required if your proposal is accepted for presentation at the conference. (For more information on the Society, go to its webpage at www.animationstudies.org.)

Financial aid for travel will be available on a limited basis; details will be forthcoming.

For further information, please contact Nichola Dobson at animationevolution@animationstudies.org . You can also follow the conference at on Twitter @anievolution.

On Friday night, July 10th, ASIFA-Atlanta put on a screening of locally-made animated films at the Woodruff Art Center’s Rich Auditorium. The event, which was made possible by the High Museum of Art, was put on as part of the 21st Annual Society for Animation Studies Conference being held that weekend at the Atlanta campus of the Society for Animation Studies. It was curated by ASIFA-Atlanta President Brett W. Thompson, who has now posted his introduction  to the screening (see above) as well as the question and answer period that followed with some of the artists who worked on the films (posted below).  Unfortunately, because of technical problems, there is a gap between parts 1 and 2, and the end of part 2 is missing.

The final program included the following films:

Animation Draw 1 — ASIFA-Atlanta; Happy and Strickly in “Fuzzy Business” — Robert Paraguassu / Bark Bark; Vice Versa — Jacques Khouri; White Cow — K.A. Callahan / Kristin Jarvis; Avery Matthews — Richard Ferguson-Hull / Steve Vitale, Turner Studios / Cartoon Network; Blossoming Flower, Smooch, Lick — Bradley Bailey; They Must Be Very Hungry — Bryan Fordney; Mouse and Cat — Joe Peery; As Seen on TV! — Lee Crowe; Traveler of the Horizon — Hamid Bahrami; Cornpopalypse — Graham Shirley; Death of a Matriarch — Takuro Masuda; Animation Draw 2 — ASIFA-Atlanta; A Day at the Beach — John Ryan; Fluidtoons — Brett W. Thompson; Stubbe Peter — Kristin Jarvis; Curtains — Amanda Goodbread; Juxtaposer — Joanna Davidovich; I Will Enjoy — Theodosia Burr (Em Kempf); Code Monkey — Jennifer Barclay; Animation Draw 3 — ASIFA-Atlanta; Get Got — Bryan Fordney; Busted — Matt Maiellaro.