From animation to anime : drawing movements and moving drawings

Abstract

This essay deals with two kinds of movement common in cel animation: 'drawing movements' and 'moving drawings'. Drawing movements is common in traditional cel animation that strives for full animation. The latter ndash; moving drawings - becomes pronounced in techniques of limited animation, common in anime . The goal is not, however, to identify and consolidate differences between animation and anime . On the contrary, this paper explores how drawing movements entails a decoding of live-action cinema,which is intensified in the techniques of moving drawings that are prevalent in anime . Thus, anime is seen as a part of movement away from one kind of cinematic experience, towards something like new media and information. The goal of the essay is to think across media, to explore the ways in which different movements have an impact on narrative, genre and spectatorship. Miyazaki Hayao's Tenkuno shiro Raputa (Castle in the sky) (Studio Ghibli, 1986) provides a site for analysis of the ways in which anime technique generates and exploits potentials such as flatness, jitter and weightlessness. Miyazaki's emphasis on floating and gliding presents one way to deal with ' anime -ic' potentials - one that has definite consequences for the imagination of gender, history and nature, as well as the anime -ic experience of information.