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The Flesh of Animation

How animation can reconnect us with bodily experiences Film and media studies scholarship has often argued that digital cinema and CGI provoke a sense of disembodiment in viewers; they are seen as merely fantastic or unreal. In her in-depth exploration of the phenomenology of animation, Sandra Annett offers a new perspective: that animated films and digital media in fact evoke vivid embodied sensations in viewers and connect them with the lifeworld of experience. Starting with the emergence of digital technologies in filmmaking in the 1980s, Annett argues that contemporary digital media is indebted to the longer history of animation. She looks at a wide range of animation—from Disney films to anime, electro swing music videos to Vocaloids—to explore how animation, through its material forms and visual styles, can evoke bodily sensations of touch, weight, and orientation in space. Each chapter discusses well-known forms of animation from the United States, France, Japan, South Korea, and China, examining how they provoke different sensations in viewers, such as floating and falling in Howl’s Moving Castle and My Beautiful Girl Mari, and how the body is mediated in films that combine animation and live action, as seen in Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Song of the South. These films set the stage for an exploration of how animation and embodiment manifest in contemporary global media, from CGI and motion capture in Disney’s “live action remakes” to new media installations by artists like Lu Yang. Leveraging an array of case studies through a new approach to film phenomenology, The Flesh of Animation offers an enlightening discussion of why animation provides a sensational experience for viewers not replicable through other media forms.

Studio Thinking from the Start

Students of all ages can learn to think like artists! Studio Thinking: The Real Benefits of Visual Arts Education changed the conversation about quality arts education. Now this new publication shows how the eight Studio Habits of Mind and four Studio Structures can be used successfully with younger students in a range of school environments. The book includes classroom examples, visual artist exemplars, templates for talking about works of art, mini-posters, and more. “If we want our students to think, if we want them to learn, we must engage them in habits of the mind that cultivate their innate abilities.” —From the Foreword by David P. Nelson, president, MassArt “Studio Thinking from the Start is a needed addition to teacher resources for improving the quality of elementary art education.” —Olivia Gude, School of the Art Institute of Chicago “Starting young with studio thinking is a fabulous idea supported by this fine resource. After all, studio thinking thrives on art but applies to everything.”

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