Posts tagged HOLLYWOOD
The post-Spiderverse boom: New developmental styles in the Hollywood computer-animated film - Part 3
The post-Spiderverse boom: New developmental styles in the Hollywood computer-animated film - Part 3

As discussed in our two most recent blog posts, Hollywood mainstream studio computer-animation post-Spider-Verse has shifted from Pixar’s photorealistic aesthetic towards a more developmental style. Sam Summers argues that Sony’s franchise adapted the comic-book language itself (2019, 190), creating an aesthetic including Ben-Day dots and visible ink lines. The franchise transformed the genre’s “visual currencies” (Holliday 2018, 1) which Spider Man: Across the Spider-Verse (Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers & Justin K. Thompson, 2023) has only pushed further. Each world has a unique style: Miguel’s futurism, Spot’s minimalism, Gwen’s painterly, Spider-Punk’s collage, and Prabhakar’s is inspired by Indrajal Comics.

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EDITORIALRachel ReillyHOLLYWOOD, COMPUTER-ANIMATED FILM, DIGITAL, AESTHETICS, STYLE, INDUSTRYComment
The post-Spiderverse boom: New developmental styles in the Hollywood computer-animated film - Part 2
The post-Spiderverse boom: New developmental styles in the Hollywood computer-animated film - Part 2

This is the second blog post of three discussing the emergence of a new developmental computer-animated style in mainstream studio animation. This week will leave Pixar behind, focusing on the DreamWorks studio as we analyse Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (Joel Crawford 2022), the most recent instalment in the Shrek (2001-) franchise, and the second standalone film featuring the character of Puss in Boots. Prior to this film, DreamWorks had primarily produced 3D hyperrealism films; The Last Wish diverges from the studio's usual formula and instead takes on more stylized, “painterly” visuals (Fig.1). While the animation remains computer-generated, the style is distinct from previous films as it was intended to emulate the look and texture of a storybook, using “painterly” rendering to blend softer brush-like textures with expressive, frame-conscious movement (Basset et al. 2013, 156). This shift in style stemmed from the influence of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, with director Joel Crawford noting that although earlier films like Shrek were celebrated for their technical realism, post Spider-Verse audiences expected greater stylistic innovation (Weiss 2024). 

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EDITORIALLucy ScarrowHOLLYWOOD, COMPUTER-ANIMATED FILM, DIGITAL, AESTHETICS, STYLE, INDUSTRYComment
The post-Spiderverse boom: New developmental styles in the Hollywood computer-animated film - Part 1
The post-Spiderverse boom: New developmental styles in the Hollywood computer-animated film - Part 1

For many decades, mainstream animation has maintained a relatively uniform visual identity. Following the release of Pixar’s 1995 debut film Toy Story (John Lasseter, 1995), a dominant visual style emerged within computer-generated filmmaking, as major animation studios began to adopt a shared set of stylistic conventions, resulting in films that appeared similar (Holliday 2018, 1). However, in 2018, mainstream animation experienced a notable shift in both its aesthetic and industrial priorities following the release of Sony’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey & Rodney Rothman, 2018). The film achieved both critical acclaim and box office success, being widely praised for its distinct visual style and its use of animation as a medium to enhance storytelling. Traditionally, mainstream animated films have followed an orthodox form, which is a mode that, despite depicting fantastical or exaggerated events, adheres to conventional narrative structures and realist frameworks (Wells 1998, 51). 

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EDITORIALMinxi ZhengHOLLYWOOD, COMPUTER-ANIMATED FILM, DIGITAL, AESTHETICS, STYLE, INDUSTRYComment
"I remember when that was a drawing." A Conversation with Concept Artist John Bell.
"I remember when that was a drawing." A Conversation with Concept Artist John Bell.

June 2026 marks the 25th anniversary of the film AI: Artificial Intelligence, written and directed by Steven Spielberg. This month also sees the release of the latest Steven Spielberg science fiction film, Disclosure Day. For Fantasy/Animation, writer James Clarke (@jameswriter72) speaks with concept artist John Bell about his memories of working on AI: Artificial Intelligence and also on Jurassic Park (Steven Spielberg, 1993) and Back to the Future Part II (Robert Zemeckis, 1989).

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EDITORIALJames ClarkeCONCEPT ART, ARTIST, ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, ROBOTS, HOLLYWOOD, SPACEComment
Evolution of American Animation
Evolution of American Animation

Upon watching an animated television programme or a feature film, we do not always think about how it came to be. I do not mean what was involved in the production process, or the direction, rather about why it looks the way it does. Indeed, the American animation industry, over the course of a hundred years, has continually changed and evolved from what it has been before in drastic ways. With indie authors becoming more and more prominent within the animated landscape, we might witness a further new tide in the industry regarding the kinds of stories being told and explorations into the medium’s creative freedom. Still, since I was a child U.S. animation has evoked many questions in my mind. How did the American animation industry evolve over the course of its existence? How have it changed to become what it is now?

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EDITORIALVladimirov IhorRACE, HOLLYWOOD, REPRESENTATION, IDENTITYComment
Isle of Dogs (2018) as a Love Letter to the Japanese Culture
Isle of Dogs (2018) as a Love Letter to the Japanese Culture

When Wes Anderson unveiled his new stop-motion film Isle of Dogs in 2018, audiences perhaps expected another symphony of symmetry, irony, and warm absurdity. But here the action had shifted to Japan — a country whose aesthetic seems to reflect Anderson's style: strict and ritualistic, yet poetic and meaningful. Needless to say, Anderson has always been a Japanophile with a profound respect for Japanese art. "Some of the main inspirations for the film were Kurosawa's film noirs of the early 1960s, “The Bad Sleep Well” (1960) and “High and Low” (1963)," said Isle of Dogs production designer Nathan Harrod (qtd. in Desowitz, 2018). Indeed, Megasaki, the fictional city where the story unfolds, looks like a futuristic version of Yokohama from High and Low in particular, while Mayor Kobayashi is based quite directly on actor Toshiro Mifune, who played businessman Gondo in the Kurosawa’s film.

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EDITORIALRasul KuramagomedovJAPAN, STOP-MOTION, HOLLYWOOD, REPRESENTATION, NATIONComment
The Bluest of Them All: Exploring the Visual Design of Megamind
The Bluest of Them All: Exploring the Visual Design of Megamind

Superheroes are a staple of American culture, following the adventures of men and women in tights who use their superhuman gifts to defeat villains that terrorize their hometown. However, one question has been commonly wondered by readers and viewers alike: What happens when the hero loses and the bad guy wins? The 2010 animated film Megamind, directed by Tom McGrath, may just have the most disruptive yet meaningful answer to this hypothetical. As the titular supervillain wins a battle against Metro City’s caped saviour after decades of failed attempts, everything else about the city seems to fall apart on its own after its core narrative event has been rewritten, and DreamWorks retorts with an even deeper question: what if the bad guy was never the bad guy at all?

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EDITORIALCristina KovacsCOLOUR, COSTUME, HOLLYWOOD, COMPUTER-ANIMATED FILMComment
Foodfight! and How Not To Make a Movie
Foodfight! and How Not To Make a Movie

Threshold Animation Studios’ 2012 animated feature film Foodfight! (Lawrence Kasanoff, 2012) is considered by critics and the audience as one of the worst animated productions of all time. But while Foodfight! performed poorly at the box office, in home video sales, and in critic and audience reviews, the film is often overlooked as a perfect example within the animation industry of everything that can go wrong when making an animated film. To understand its colossal failure, context in how, why, and when it was created is essential.

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EDITORIALJacob PruittPRODUCTION, LABOUR, COMPUTER-ANIMATED FILM, HOLLYWOODComment
[Je]Witch: Watching Wicked through a Jewish Lens
[Je]Witch: Watching Wicked through a Jewish Lens

As a foreign student in the U.K., grappling with my relationship with my familial and cultural history of Jewish migration, the topic of “home” comes, well… close to home. So, when watching the recent filmic adaptation of the stage musical Wicked (Stephen Schwartz & Winnie Holzman, 2003-), Wicked: For Good (Jon M. Chu, 2025) (Fig. 1), and listening to Elphaba’s new song, “No Place Like Home,” I couldn’t help but put on my Jewish-witch-hat.

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EDITORIALDana GreenHOLLYWOOD, MUSICAL, POLITICAL
Analysis of Fantasia 2000’s The Firebird Suite
Analysis of Fantasia 2000’s The Firebird Suite

The Firebird Suite, based upon Igor Stravinsky’s 1919 orchestral concert work of the same name, is a short animation directed by Gaetan and Paul Brizzi, released in 1999 as a segment within the larger animated feature Fantasia 2000 (Don Hahn, Pixote Hunt, Hendel Butoy, Eric Goldberg, James Algar, Francis Glebas, Paul and Gaëtan Brizzi, 1999) (Fig. 1). Within her introduction segment for both the animation and the orchestral piece from which it was derived, famed actress and film producer Angela Lansbury described The Firebird Suite as a “mythical story of life, death, and renewal.” In doing so, she alighted upon the simultaneous, unified, and diametrical relationships of inherently contrasting elements, such as death and life, and darkness and light, to one another —a concept that would come to serve as the primary narrative catalyst for both media.

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EDITORIALAustin Van ZandtMUSICAL, DISNEY, HOLLYWOOD, STYLEComment
Transformers: The Movie (1986) and the Refusal of the Call trope
Transformers: The Movie (1986) and the Refusal of the Call trope

Joseph Campbell identifies the refusal of the call in his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces as a story trope where the main protagonist of the story is called to an adventure but refuses to go. The hero’s reluctance to act can come from a variety of reasons that are usually psychological in nature. Emotions such as guilt or fear try to keep the hero homebound so that he/she cannot soar and reach their full heroic potential. It is an age-old trend that is found in all mediums of mankind’s story form. Everything from epic poems, oral fairy tales, literary fiction, television shows and finally movies. It is a part of the storytelling tradition that Campbell famously calls “The Monomyth.” 

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SEQUENCE ANALYSISShakeem R. WinnNARRATIVE, STORYTELLING, HOLLYWOOD, ADAPTATION Comments
A Critical Look at the Representation of Prominent Black Women in Warner Bros. Animation
A Critical Look at the Representation of Prominent Black Women in Warner Bros. Animation

Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs was one of the earliest animated American films to place a Black woman as the main character. Directed by Bob Clampett at Warner Brothers in 1942, the character of So White set a precedent for three further Black female lead characters in future Warner Brothers animated projects. However, introduced as a “happy washerwoman made for a jazzier version of the mammy stereotype” (Lehman 2007, 78), So White contributes to a larger structure of racism within American animation, hindering the progression of positive representation for future Black women as animated characters. The question that this blog investigates is whether the representation of Black women in Warner Brothers animation has truly improved since the introduction of So White, or do So White’s successors continue to perpetrate harmful stereotypes about African American women?

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EDITORIALAlissa Clarke-GaarRACE, CHARACTER, GENDER, HOLLYWOOD, REPRESENTATION Comments
The Story of Plaything
The Story of Plaything

The story of my animated film Plaything (still in production) and its themes of minstrelsy and racism is a long arduous journey that continues to surprise me even as I author this article. Once the film is completed, it will dive firmly and deeply into the darkest depths of American history and explore the disturbing roots of Blackface minstrelsy, slavery, and Jim Crow, which have nourished and supported multiple media form for nearly two centuries, from the macabre roots of the Southern Gothic sub-genre to cartoons and animated filmmaking.

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CREATIVE REFLECTIONShakeem R. WinnRACE, RALPH BAKSHI, REPRESENTATION, HOLLYWOOD, CRAFTComment
An Analysis of The Thief and the Cobbler (Richard Williams, 1995)
An Analysis of The Thief and the Cobbler (Richard Williams, 1995)

Based and inspired by Arabian Nights and other 13th-century folklore, The Thief and the Cobbler (1995) directed by legendary animator Richard Williams follows the parallel stories of a shy cobbler named Tack and a nameless kleptomaniac thief. Tack falls in love with the beautiful Princess Yum Yum of the Golden City after she saves him from the wrath of the grand vizier Zig Zag. Together, they must save their kingdom from death and destruction by retrieve the 3 golden balls that protect the city after the thief's failed attempt at stealing them, causing them to fall into the hands of Zig Zag who plans to marry princess Yum-Yum and rule the city.

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EDITORIALSara DouglassPRODUCTION, HISTORY, HOLLYWOODComment
Between Humans and Machine: The Iron Giant's Reflection of AI
Between Humans and Machine: The Iron Giant's Reflection of AI

Popular media has often portrayed technology as a looming threat to society and human livelihood. However, animation as a medium has provided a unique lens through which to explore the nuances of humanity's interaction with technological forces. Brad Bird's feature The Iron Giant (1999) stands as a poignant example of this exploration. By analyzing the use of hybrid animation techniques and storytelling in the film, I aim to unravel a metaphorical narrative that delves into humanity's relationship with technology, as well as its modern-day resonance with perceptions of artificial intelligence (AI) and assumptions on the threat of machine learning to humanity.

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EDITORIALAlyssa LamellTECHNOLOGY, ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, HOLLYWOOD, CEL ANIMATION, DIGITALComment
A Look at How to Train Your Dragon (Dean DeBlois, 2010) from a Queer Perspective
A Look at How to Train Your Dragon (Dean DeBlois, 2010) from a Queer Perspective

Based on a book of the same name by Cressida Cowell, How to Train Your Dragon (Dean DeBlois, 2010) was influential on family audiences, and especially children, when it was released in March 2010, with a unique story about a misfit teenage Viking named Hiccup, discovering his sense of self as he ascends to adulthood. We follow Hiccup on his journey of self-discovery and self-acceptance, and, in the end, he gains the trust and admiration of his peers and the surrounding society.

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EDITORIALTrinity SencindiverQUEER IDENTITY, HOLLYWOOD, FRANCHISE, IDENTITY, COMPUTER-ANIMATED FILM Comments
That Old Pixar Magic: Reframing our Perception of Computer-Animation’s Beloved Studio
That Old Pixar Magic: Reframing our Perception of Computer-Animation’s Beloved Studio

Undeniably, Toy Story (John Lasseter, 1995) changed the global animation industry forever, properly introducing the world to Woody, Buzz and a studio that would come to define the childhoods of millions of people. Following an unprecedented streak of beloved crowd-pleasing computer-animated films, Pixar Animation Studios made a name for itself with a brand built on a gold standard of quality, a reputation that has since become both a blessing and a curse. Ever since the start of the 2010s, and tied to the lacklustre reception of Cars 2 (John Lasseter, 2011), the common refrain that the latest Pixar release is missing that “old Pixar magic” has become a staple of most new releases from the studio.

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EDITORIALOliver VigniINDUSTRY, PIXAR ANIMATION STUDIOS, HOLLYWOOD, COMPUTER-ANIMATED FILMComment
Review: LAIKA: Frame x Frame (BFI Southbank)
Review: LAIKA: Frame x Frame (BFI Southbank)

The joy of stop-motion films lies in noticing the little details, those intricate features crafted in miniature and tucked into the background of a scene, adding a richness of texture to the (usually) fantasy world onscreen. It is these little details that are celebrated by the British Film Institute’s new exhibition LAIKA: Frame x Frame, opening on August 12th and running until October 1st at the BFI Southbank, as part of their Stop-Motion season. With over 700 artefacts on display, walking through the exhibit evokes the very best stop-motion viewing experience, each glance revealing another miniscule, yet exquisitely modelled feature.

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EVENT REVIEWMarkus BeekenSTOP-MOTION, CRAFT, LABOUR, HOLLYWOODComment
Animation vs Automation: Labour, Artificial Intelligence, and the Silent Crisis in the Animation Industry
Animation vs Automation: Labour, Artificial Intelligence, and the Silent Crisis in the Animation Industry

In 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.

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EDITORIALOliver VigniANIMATION, ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, LABOUR, HOLLYWOOD, INDUSTRYComment
Fantasy/Animation: David Bordwell (1947-2024)
Fantasy/Animation: David Bordwell (1947-2024)

To mark the life of distinguished film theorist and historian David Bordwell (1947-2024), and to add to the many tributes from across the disciplines of film and media studies, Chris and Alex have begun to collect some of Professor Bordwell’s writings that connect to fantasy and animation both in print and on his website davidbordwell.net and accompanying blog Observations on Film Art.

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EDITORIALChristopher Holliday and Alexander SergeantHOLLYWOOD, FILM HISTORY, CRITICISM, INTERPRETATION Comments