Line and Colour in The Band Concert

Abstract

This article addresses the techniques and materials used in the production of The Band Concert (1935), a sevenminute Technicolor Mickey Mouse cartoon. An investigation of the standardization of drawing and line in the context of the histories of technical drawing and the industrialization of animation is followed by a description of the use of colour, particularly of the relation between the inks used on the cels and the dyes used in film prints at the time. The author asks whether it is possible to articulate a materialist theory of the aesthetic, ethical and political meanings of technique and technology without losing sight of the techniques and technologies themselves.

‘Don’t Box Me In’: Blurred Lines in Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly

“…In terms of source material, Hogarth’s examples are drawn from ‘life’ whereas the Rotoshopped examples are based on photography. As noted earlier, Sobchack (2008) remarks there are no lines inherent to the photo-real world (see also Cubitt, 2009, for further discussion of the line); similarly there is no interior to a photographed image. In the Rotoshopped examples, then, lines are mapped onto an ‘empty’ image, or an image that lacks a completely direct correlation to the ‘real’ world.…”