The Computer-Animated Film
Industry, Style and Genre
Widely credited for the revival of feature-length animated filmmaking within contemporary Hollywood, computer-animated films are today produced within a variety of national contexts and traditions. Covering thirty years of computer-animated film history, and analysing over 200 different examples, The Computer-Animated Film: Industry, Style and Genre persuasively argues that this body of work constitutes a unique genre of mainstream cinema. Informed by wider technological discourses and the status of animation as an industrial art form, the book not only theorises computer-animated films through their formal properties, but connects elements of film style to animation practice and the computer-animated film’s unique production contexts.
Key Features- Provides a wide-ranging focus on a multitude of animation studios, companies, facilities, divisions and subsidiaries in Hollywood and beyond
- Supported throughout by close textual analysis and clearly marked case studies
- Expands the critical examination of computer-animated films by combining animation and film theory together with theories of animation practice, industry papers and original studio production memos
- Shark Tale (2004)
- Hoodwinked! (2006)
- Flushed Away (2006)
- Over the Hedge (2006)
- The Good Dinosaur (2015)
- Frozen (2013)
- Zootopia (2016)
- Ratatouille (2007)
- Antz (1998)
- A Bug’s Life (1998)
- Wall-E (2008)
- Toy Story 3 (2010)
- Toy Story 2 (1999)
- Cars (2005) / Cars 2 (2011)
- Happy Feet (2006)
- Sausage Party (2016)
- Monsters, Inc. (2001)
- Rise of the Guardians (2012)
- Despicable Me 2 (2013) / Minions (2015)
- Surf’s Up (2007)
- Bolt (2008)
Table of Contents
List of illustrations
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. Falling with style? The Computer-Animated Film and Genre
2. Towards a Journey Narrative syntax
3. Notes on a Luxo world
4. Computer-Animated Films and Anthropomorphic Subjectivity
5. Object Transformation and the Spectacle of Scrap
6. Pixar, Performance and Puppets
7. Monsters, Synch: A Taxonomy of the Star Voice
8. From Wile E. to Wall-E: Computer-Animated Film Comedy
9. Dreamworks Animation, Metalepsis and Diegetic Deconstruction
10. The Mannerist Game
Conclusion: Satisfying a Spirit of Adventure
Bibliography
Index
The Computer-Animated Film is ambitious in its scope and comprehensive in its coverage, which alone would make a go-to text in the still-comparatively underserved field of contemporary animation. On top of this, its intelligent critique and potentially controversial genre-based approach make it an engaging read for experienced animation scholars.'
Holliday writes with an appealing style, covering the changing fortunes of the computer-animation industry with verve and appeal.
Holliday persuasively argues that contemporary computer animation feature films constitute a genre in their own right. Re-positioning genre through fresh configurations of how computer animated films relate to each other, he analyzes their ideologically-charged formal and technical characteristics, successfully revealing new systems of textual properties and affordances. Insisting that the very ‘animatedness’ of computer animation invokes a revision of the traditional cartoon, conventional film tropes and digital moving images, Holliday properly traces the influence of animation in the re-invention of mainstream movies per se.
