[ecrea] Animation Practice, Process & Production 6 published

Intellect is delighted to announce that Animation Practice, Process & 
Production 6 is now available. For the full article list, click here >> 
https://bit.ly/2PEFojE


*Contents*

_The new needs friends: On the academic as a critic and a public voice_

Authors: Paul Wells
Page Start: 3

This discussion is concerned with looking at the academic as a ‘critic’ 
in the service of becoming a public voice, and in conducting 
production-based work that is directed at social issues and public 
engagement. The analysis draws upon a variety of definitions of 
‘criticism’ from both a scholarly and journalistic perspective, 
eventually developing two kinds of criticism – the auto-critique and the 
procedural-critique – that play out the relationship between ‘the 
creative’ and ‘the critic’, essentially defining a theory of practice, 
and the practice of theory. These theorizations are then illustrated 
through the projects described in the following essays, seeking to show 
that the academic practitioner/creative must necessarily cultivate a 
model of ‘critique’ that both self-consciously monitors process while 
creating a practice outcome that speak to research questions. This then 
becomes comparable to external critical agencies that engage in the 
analysis of process in order to articulate its critical context in the 
service of evaluating outcomes. The essay essentially explores the 
complex relationship between these two models and their place with 
regard to institutional, social and cultural roles.

_Defining animation therapy: The Good Hearts Model_

Authors: Melanie Hani
Page Start: 17

This discussion is concerned with looking at the academic as a ‘critic’ 
in the service of becoming a public voice, and in conducting 
production-based work that is directed at social issues and public 
engagement. The analysis draws upon a variety of definitions of 
‘criticism’ from both a scholarly and journalistic perspective, 
eventually developing two kinds of criticism – the auto-critique and the 
procedural-critique – that play out the relationship between ‘the 
creative’ and ‘the critic’, essentially defining a theory of practice, 
and the practice of theory. These theorizations are then illustrated 
through the projects described in the following essays, seeking to show 
that the academic practitioner/creative must necessarily cultivate a 
model of ‘critique’ that both self-consciously monitors process while 
creating a practice outcome that speak to research questions. This then 
becomes comparable to external critical agencies that engage in the 
analysis of process in order to articulate its critical context in the 
service of evaluating outcomes. The essay essentially explores the 
complex relationship between these two models and their place with 
regard to institutional, social and cultural roles.
_
The dog was acting: Designing an animation tool to enable children and 
young people to express their views about their health state_

Authors: Matt Abbiss And Joan Ashworth And Neus Abrines And John Cairns 
And Jo Wray And Katherine Brown And Carla Guerriero
Page Start: 53

Children’s Health State Preferences Learnt from Animation (CHILDSPLA) is 
an innovative, multidisciplinary collaboration between the London School 
of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Great Ormond Street Hospital and the 
Royal College of Art, London. The team came together to develop an 
animated iPad app aiming to measure the health states of children, 
designed to gather key data directly from them rather than through a 
parent or carer. Successful development of a child-friendly method for 
collecting health information directly from children would add 
considerably to the ability to measure outcomes and evaluate the 
effectiveness of treatments. It was expected that the app would allow 
children as young as 4 years old to express their views, not only 
because it required lower literacy competencies but also because it 
would be more engaging. For example, the app was designed to ask the 
child, ‘on a scale of 1–5 how much pain are you in today?’ but, rather 
than text or voice, the app showed animated representations of pain, 
sleeplessness and annoyance, etc. Children were involved from the outset 
in the design of the character and the animation performances., The 
style of the animation needed to be tested by the young target users to 
observe their responses to different styles of animated performance. 
Some children observed that some animation characters were acting in an 
exaggerated way, for comic effect, and this distanced them from 
empathizing with the expressed emotion, as it was not seen as genuine. 
This led the animator to steer away from broad and exaggerated animation 
in order to chase engagement and stay closer to subtler, more 
naturalistic performances.


The animated prototype app was tested by both sick and healthy children 
against other forms of gathering data. The CHILDSPLA team discussed and 
reflected on the challenges and knowledge emerging during the first year 
of the Medical Research Council-funded project.

_‘Loved and lost’: Animation as a methodology for understanding and 
making meaning of loss for a group of adults with learning disabilities_

Authors: Yvonne Eckersley
Page Start: 71

This article relates to the professional doctorate work of Yvonne 
Eckersley relating to an exploration of loss via the medium of animation 
with members of Wrexham Voice (a self-advocacy group for adults with 
learning disabilities). The aim of the study is to define loss for the 
group members and evaluate whether participating in the animation 
process can change this perception and facilitate well-being. The study 
uses a general inductive methodology that is ethnographic. The study has 
three main objectives:
1. The first objective is to identify a shared understanding (between 
group members) of the phenomena of loss.
2. The second objective is to assess whether by exploring loss through 
the various processes involved in the production of an animated film 
changes the participants.
3. The final objective is to evaluate the potential for agency that the 
completed animation film offers the participants and whether this 
affects their perception of loss.


In identifying the first objective, the depth of social and political 
oppression felt by people with learning disabilities soon becomes 
evident. Not only do they often find themselves excluded from the 
rituals surrounding death but often their lack of communication skills 
mean that their emotional distress goes unrecognized with feelings of 
sadness and loneliness being viewed only in terms of changes in their 
behaviour, which may be described as aggressive or passive by carers and 
professionals and not necessarily attributed to their grief. In view of 
the wide variation in the perceptions of and communication styles of the 
group members, the potential of visual and art-based methods in offering 
a means to communicate with others and express emotions associated with 
loss is key to the study. In this context, the study seeks to evaluate 
the unique role of animation as a healing methodology.

_Speaking each other’s language: The development of an animation 
prototype with the intention to toggle the language barrier among 
children of the Greek and the Turkish Cypriot community_

Authors: Myria Christophini
Page Start: 93

This article describes the design process of a test animation prototype 
that aims to improve communication among children of the two conflicting 
communities in Cyprus by encouraging them to learn each other’s 
language. The prototype is based on research undergone with the 
conflicting parties, where their perception of the conflict and on each 
other was addressed and researched. In essence, it is discussing the 
project’s reception by a Cypriot audience and is encouraging further 
work and research to be conducted as part of a reconciliation process on 
the island, and on the potential of the medium of animation for the 
purpose of peace-building.

_The story of first-person: Recovering autobiographical memory through 
the animated documentary Ketchup_

Authors: Chunning Guo And Baishen Yan
Page Start: 115

This is practice-based research, aiming to explore the experimental form 
of animated documentary, which is a unique form that can explore the 
mysteries and complexity of memories. Animated documentary is a medium 
through which one can reveal an individual’s memories within the context 
of a narrative that is historically situated and influenced. The 
marriage of animation and documentary gave birth to a new form of film. 
How should academic critics and practitioners categorize this new form? 
Is it an animated short or documentary short? This raises issues that 
question the very nature of animation and documentary. Following Shuibo 
Wang’s works, more young Chinese artists began to experiment with 
symbols (related to the Political Pop Trend) in visual narration, which 
could also be seen as a reflection of an advance in structuralism and 
semiology in the contemporary Chinese art field. As a case study, this 
article demonstrates how animated short ‘Ketchup’ revealed the problems 
of youth and social turmoil through the memories of a six-year-old boy. 
At Festivals and conferences, the public have been shocked to know that 
‘Ketchup’ was based on true memories, and they became more curious about 
why such crucial things have almost been forgotten. Actually 
‘forgetfulness’ is one of the layers of memory and animated documentary 
offers new ways to explore how our memories are shaped.

_Animation and informative films: Two early ‘digital’ films_

Authors: Nicolò Ceccarelli
Page Start: 137

During the 1960s two of the most influential teams of visual 
communicators of that time produced short information films on digital 
technology for some of the major competing companies in the field. Both 
La memoria del futuro (Risi 1960) (‘The memory of the future’), produced 
in 1960 for Olivetti by a team led by Italy’s graphic designer Giovanni 
Pintori and Academy Award nominated animator Giulio Gianini, and A 
Computer Glossary, produced eight years later for International Business 
Machines (IBM) by the celebrated Eames Office, took great advantage of 
the combined powers of graphics and animation to make the abstract 
workings of computer processing accessible. Either on its own, or 
combined with footage from the ‘real world’, animated sequences have 
proved to be a very effective way to make complex contents easier to 
grasp for a wide audience, enabling communicators and directors to 
create very articulated narrative structures. Such structures offer 
degrees of conceptual versatility unthinkable in the domain of realistic 
documentary. Through the comparison and analysis of the two short films 
Olivetti and one IBM, this article aims to discuss the elements that 
make the language of animation an ideal tool to make complex and 
abstract things more understandable, without losing its ability to 
engage and entertain its public, therefore opening the way for a very 
promising season of informative animation.

_Animation as mindful practice_

Authors: Graham Barton And Birgitta Hosea
Page Start: 149

This article reports on a joint research project at Central Saint 
Martins, University of the Arts London and the Royal College of Art that 
investigates whether the making of drawn animation can be demonstrated 
as a mindful practice. The original intention of the project was to 
explore the potential application of Buddhist principles and practices 
such as mindfulness within a practical, secular context to benefit art 
and design students who experience stress in the learning environment 
and who wish to examine their learning processes more closely. This 
research project is situated within wider developments in UK higher 
education that seek to enable students to engage meaningfully with the 
affective and extra-rational dimensions of learning. Faced with a 
complex and uncertain future, and curricula that encourage engagement in 
uncertainty and ambiguity, art and design graduates need to be able to 
take responsibility for their personal development and respond to stress 
and change in generative and constructive ways. During the research 
process, a series of experiential activities and workshops were devised 
to explore the development of a group of capacities identified in a 
number of published sustainability literacy frameworks, in particular 
the attributes of personal resilience, self-awareness and 
interconnectedness through systemic and relational thinking and making. 
The project looks at the potential of the processes of drawn animation 
in combination with short-form mindfulness meditation techniques for 
developing these and associated attributes.

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