CHARACTER — footnote episodes

Footnote #73 - Rotoscoping

Footnote 73 looks at animation’s historical relationship to the body and how physicality was transcribed via the rotoscoping process as part of the construction of the earliest animated characters. From the Fleischer Studios pioneering the technology for use in their Out of the Inkwell series of shorts (1918–1927) and later feature films Gulliver's Travels (David Fleischer, 1939), and Mr. Bug Goes to Town (Dave Fleischer, 1941), through to Bob Sabiston’s digital homage to rotoscoping when developing the Rotoshop tool during the 1990s, this episode has Chris take Alex through the mechanics of projecting performances onto glass to be be traced by the animators to craft their animated performances.

Footnote #72 - The Hero's Journey

Building on their recent podcast episode on Kung Fu Panda (John Stevenson & Mark Osborne, 2008) with screenwriter John Yorke, Alex takes Chris through the mechanics and mysteries involved in the hero’s journey, Joseph Campbell’s famous structure and patterning of narrative, to discuss how such storytelling archetypes link to Jungian approaches towards the process of character individuation.

FOOTNOTE PODCASTChristopher Holliday and Alexander SergeantFebruary 2, 2026CHARACTER, NARRATIVE, STORYTELLINGComment

Footnote #71 - Synthespians

Listen as the brand new Fantasy/Animation Footnote tackles the complexities and contradictions of digital performance and cyber stardom via this discussion of synthespians, a term very much anchored to early-2000s concerns around the future of acting, agency, and authenticity whose popularisation was largely prompted by the rise of motion capture and other forms of computerised intervention.

FOOTNOTE PODCASTChristopher Holliday and Alexander SergeantJanuary 19, 2026PERFORMANCE, TECHNOLOGY, DIGITAL, CHARACTERComment

Footnote #64 - The Golden Age of Animation

Fresh from last week’s discussion of Mickey Mouse, Chris and Alex are once again joined by Dr David McGowan (Lecturer in the Contextual and Theoretical Studies of Animation at the University of the Arts London) to map the mythology of the Golden Age of Animation, and in particular how this phase of the medium’s history has been framed in relation to the cartoon’s move from silent to sound technology but also its emergent stability and security as an industrial art form.

Footnote #63 - The Censored Eleven

Chris and Alex take a look at animation’s historical and troubling relationship to race with this examination of the Censored Eleven, a collection of controversial Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons produced during the 1930s and 1940s removed from syndication since 1968 for their inclusion of harmful and offensive racist stereotypes.

Footnote #8 - Plasmaticness

Footnote #8 offers a brief detour to the abridged and incomplete animated writings of Russian filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein from the 1940s, and in particular his notorious concept of “plasmaticness” that he argued was a way of understanding the appeal and attraction of Walt Disney’s cartoon images