When Arcane (Riot Games/Fortiche Production, 2021–) first came out, most people focused on how beautiful it looked. And that makes sense. The painterly animation is striking right away. But what really makes the series stand out is something deeper. It shows class conflict in a way that feels almost physical. Not just through the story, but through the world itself. In Arcane, inequality is not explained to you. You see it instantly.
Read MoreWhen I first encountered the part of L. M. Montgomery’s 1911 book The Story Girl that contained the tale of “The Wedding Veil of the Proud Princess,” I was struck by a sense of recognition. As a director and storyteller myself, it felt less like discovering a story and more like remembering one I had always known, a fairy tale so archetypal that it seemed impossible it was not already part of the shared cultural canon. Its setup of a beautiful princess who declares she will only marry the king who conquers all kings, and the payoff of this turning out to be Death himself, has all the hallmarks of a medieval fairy tale.
Read MoreArcane, directed by Pascal Charrue, Arnaud Delord, and Bart Maunoury in 2024, is a tale of two sisters and their tumultuous relationship shaped by the neighbouring cities around them. Their choices influence the future of these cities, and the impact each has on the other is profound. However, there lies an alternate timeline where other aspects of the world are explored, and the audience gets a glimpse of what could have been. As this blog post shows, season two, episode seven of Arcane titled “Pretend Like It's the First Time,” contrasted with the series as a whole, portrays psychological disorders not as a flaw but a facet of character through the lens of narrative and colour using a girl named Powder.
Read MoreThe Society for Animation Studies (SAS), one of the world’s most well-known and popular international organizations dedicated to the study of animation history, theory and practice, holds an annual conference at locations throughout the world each year, where members present their recent research. The 36th Annual Society for Animation Studies conference took place between 7th-10th July 2025, hosted in Elephant & Castle, London, by the Screen School, London College of Communication (LCC), University of the Arts London (UAL). This year’s conference title was ‘Sustaining Animation’, and was inspired by UAL’s key values of climate, social and racial justice, and equality, diversity, and inclusion.
Read MoreHazbin Hotel, a series created and directed by Vivienne Medrano, premiered in 2024. It follows the story of Charlie Morningstar, daughter of Lucifer Morningstar and Lilith, and her efforts to prevent sinners from facing the annual extermination which results in her establishing a hotel that rehabilitates them for entry into heaven. Although the series episodes explore a multitude of themes and topics, the episode that particularly resonated with me was “Episode 4: Masquerade,” which follows the character of Angel Dust as he tries to balance his job’s responsibilities while residing at the hotel.
Read MoreIn 2009, Vivian Sobchack asked: “what might it mean to bring together the concepts and practices of ‘animation’ and ‘automation’”? At the time Sobchack was writing on the visibility of labour within a modern computer-generated cinematic framework, where computers have become advanced enough that they appear to “have a life of their own” (2009, 375). In her examination of Pixar’s computer-animated film WALL-E (Andrew Stanton, 2008), Sobchack notes that it is the machines, the robots like WALL-E and EVE, who are imbued with “the movement of life,” while the humans are left motionless.
Read MoreHot on the heels of the return of CEO Bob Iger in November 2022 to replace Bob Chapek, the last 12-18 months have certainly seen some important milestones within the industrial, cultural, and technological history of the Walt Disney Company.
Read MoreTim Burton’s Bodies provides a distinctive body-centric approach to the analysis of Burton’s back-catalogue of animated and live-action films (see Fig. 1 for book cover). Tim Burton is an internationally celebrated filmmaker, animator and artist who has worked in the industry since the 1980s. His work is commercially and critically acclaimed and is mostly associated with the fantasy horror sub-genre, the macabre and spectral, animated corpses and grotesque outsider protagonists.
Read MoreThe Disney Renaissance is one of those curious constructs that circulates among the Walt Disney Company and its fan communities, entering academic studies of Disney animation largely unchallenged. What, exactly, was the Disney Renaissance? One of the many pleasures and privileges of being an animation scholar is not only to think about Disney, but to think about how we think about Disney. And unsurprisingly, a lot of the critical discourse on Disney is shaped by Disney itself.
Read MoreStar Wars: Visions is an anime anthology series created by Lucasfilm and originally released on September 22, 2021. As an anthology series, the episodes of Star Wars: Visions are all independent from each other, both in plot and production, however even with the narrative and stylistic variety in the series, one episode stands out from the rest visually: the first episode, “The Duel” directed by Takanobu Mizuno and produced by the animation studio Kamikaze Douga.
Read MoreIn the ever-evolving world of animation, one independent studio dares to push the envelope. Located on a mountain top, surrounded by fields and forests Grateful Motion Studios’ unique setting provides the freedom and space to create exceptional works of art. The latest project from Harrison Killian, founder of Grateful Motion Studios, is an animated short film Rider On The Storm.
Read MoreOver the Garden Wall (2014) is a dark fantasy miniseries created by Patrick McHale and Katie Krentz and produced for the Cartoon Network in 2014 (Fig. 1). The series follows the adventures of two brothers, Wirt and Greg, who are trying to find their way home as they travel through a magical forest.
Read MoreAdapted from Victor Hugo’s gothic novel, The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Gary Trousdale & Kirk Wise, 1996) tells the story of bellringer Quasimodo (Tom Hulce), born with a physical deformity that gives him a hunched back. The Disney animated film first depicts Quasimodo as a baby, when he was stolen from his Romani parents by Judge Claude Frollo (Tony Jay) during one of his nighttime raids on the streets of Paris. The judge reluctantly raises Quasimodo as his own child, but keeps him locked high in a belltower away from all outside contact, until one day, a Romani dancer named Esmeralda (voiced by Demi Moore) enters Quasimodo’s life.
Read MoreLast week the BAFTSS Animation SIG presented another stellar online event. This time the SIG offered to explore the uncanny territories of posthumous and posthuman animation. Organized by Dr. Sam Summers (Middlesex University) and featuring works-in-progress by a doctoral student Alice Giuliani (University of West London) and Dr. Christopher Holliday (King’s College London), the Posthumous & Posthuman Animation seminar took place on Zoom on May 10th 2023.
Read MoreThe first event of the new BAFTSS Animated SIG was a very spooky one. Threading the often-unexplored relationship between animation and horror and organized by Dr. Sam Summers (Middlesex University), “Animated Horror: An Online Mini-Event” (Fig. 1) took place online on October 19, 2022. Even though it was a short one, the seminar offered a great deal of varied richness on issues of liminality, transformations, and the overlapping of horrific and seemingly innocent content, within animated horror.
Read MoreNoel Brown provides an engaging and well-researched account of contemporary Hollywood feature animation, here defined as from the 1990s onwards. Noting the recent significance of animation to both the Hollywood studios, their parent conglomerates, and popular culture more broadly, he aims to outline the “form and poetics of the mainstream animated feature” (Brown 2020, 2), with chapters devoted to their narrative and thematic focus on family and friendship, aesthetic shifts, and changes around their representations of identity.
Read MoreFranz Kafka once wrote that Gregor Samsa awoke one morning to find himself in the body of an enormous insect. This Metamorphosis caused Gregor some difficulties, and both Kafka’s novella as well as the stage adaptation by Steven Berkoff explored issues of class and identity.
Read MoreMany videogame players awaited the release of Netflix Animation’s The Cuphead Show! (Dave Wasson, 2022). The show is based on the videogame Cuphead (Chad and Jared Moldenhauer, 2017), which was noted for its unique aesthetics within the gaming world. The game’s innovation lay in its inspiration in early 20th century American animation.
Read MoreThe climactic sequence of The Thief and the Cobbler/The Princess and the Cobbler/Arabian Knight (unfinished, 1993, 1995, Richard Williams) or the ‘War Machine sequence’ - as it is commonly found on YouTube - is a long and intricate piece of experimental animation.
Read MoreDon Corrigan’s light-hearted Nuts About Squirrels: The Rodents that Conquered Popular Culture (McFarland, 2019) makes the case for a squirrel as the dominant rodent of American popular culture.
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