Editorial

Abstract

The use of animation in hybrid and transmedia works offers a rich complex resource and object of study for our field in that they implicate animation in other media forms, as the first two articles in this issue demonstrate. Live action in combination with animation film has been used with great success over close to a century, from the Fleischer Bros. Out of the Inkwell cartoons in the 1910s onwards to popular pre-digital features at the end of the 20th century and continuing into digital and CGI productions. These hybrid works are scrutinized in terms of a vehicle for gags and comedy by Luke Holmaas in ‘Implausible Possibility: Freedom and Realism in Live-Action/Animated Gag Comedies’. Holmaas points out how comedy is a genre that often figures in other genre films, and how it is problematized in discussions of narrative, before establishing a structure for his undertaking that aims to demonstrate how animation and live action hybrid films are effective in creating gag comedy. After an historical review of the key hybrid films, he works through relevant details of various elements of film industry technologies and production, demonstrating a tension between the two techniques – the freedom of animation and the realism of live-action – further suggesting this tension is also observable in non-hybrid films. From drawn and cel animation to CGI works, Holmaas convincingly argues why and how hybrid films are suited to gags and comedy, and what is at work with the audience watching them that supports this. He then concentrates on three feature films, applying what we have learned and providing an analysis of why the comedy works, concluding with observations on why hybrid films are and will remain to be important in the Hollywood industry. Besides their historically primary use in animated shorts, features and advertising, animated media have long been the visual interface and creative basis for a range of other types of media, from video games to developments in the experiential immersive worlds of AR and VR. In ‘Animating for Interactivity: The Walk Cycles of Prince of Persia (1989) and Ninja Gaiden (1988)’, Byron Fong focuses on a basic, essential, central element of character-based animation: the walk cycle, often the first repetitive, looped animation anyone will make. Declaring an interest in establishing its use in video games within animation history, Fong approaches this animated ‘action’ as an historical form of animation with examples reaching back to 19th-century philosophical toys. He then examines how games artists use this concept, reveals what he calls a tension between verisimilitude of movement and player control, and explores what they have to do to ameliorate the effects of interactivity and linearity of games on walk cycles. Fong undertakes close comparative analyses of his own experiences of two games, chosen in part for their stylistic affinities with full (fluidity, verisimilitude, less gamer control) and limited animation (tempo, stylization, responsive control). His analyses are interspersed with a first-person gameplay commentary of description, which helps the reader understand the in situ gameplay. Technical descriptions of artists’ animated processes help explain the aesthetic results and Fong also expands on understandings of interactivity throughout the article; one of many interesting observations is that a gamer triggering an animation loop can experience something similar to the physical interactivity of 1188398 ANM0010.1177/17468477231188398animation: an interdisciplinary journalEditorial editorial2023