Dr. Petrik, for whom I’m TAing History of Animation, has asked me to highlight a good student post each week, so that students who are having trouble might be able to look at some of the better examples and learn from them.
Unfortunately (or fortunately) this week, there’s too many to choose from. A rundown of just a few of the posts I enjoyed, thought were good, made me think, etc…
Amanda Cole’s post looking at “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” as an homage to the greats of early short-subject animation does a nice job of linking a work with its predecessors.
Ian Crawford’s post does a very nice job of looking at a nontraditional source– a promotional video from the Cartoon Network– and using that to look at a moment in the history of the business of cartoons.
Joe Gayk’s post tries to go past the specific and to ponder some of the reasons for animation’s popularity. While the example Joe uses is markedly contemporary, I think his model of animation’s excess as a release valve to urban stresses could be particularly interesting when applied to the first twenty or thirty years of animation’s history.
Carlyn Pocalyko gives an almost encyclopedic view of “Rock-a-Doodle,” a colossal flop that I have to admit I’d forgotten about entirely, historicizing it as a watershed moment– as the movie where we can see Don Bluth’s relevance slip through his fingers.
…That’s just a few, and there were several other really great examples this week. Good work, guys– keep it up!
