‘Movements that are drawn’: A history of environmental animation from The Lorax to FernGully to Avatar

Abstract

This article surveys the history of environmental animation and charts the aesthetic possibilities it offers for environmental representation, in order to prompt a reconsideration of indexical media’s dominant role in environmental communication. Given animation’s formal capabilities, it has the potential to depict imperceptible, indeterminate and interactive environments. Distinct representational practices have emerged in animated environmental films: the visualization of environmental mutability, the representation of environmental interaction and the revelation of the environment as a construct. This article defines three periods of environmental animation: the 1960s to early 1970s, the late 1980s to early 1990s, and 2005 to the present, and analyses how these practices transformed during each cycle. Early short films pioneered the depiction of a mutable environment. In the second period, mutability became less significant, but feature films expanded the possible modes of environmental interaction. Most recently, films have begun to reflect on the environment as a visual construct.

Reel Conservation: Can Big Screen Animations Save Tropical Biodiversity?

“…Another undesirable side-effect which has arisen from ecologically-themed animations and which has been the subject of much debate is their tendency to oversimplify complex conservation issues, and that ideologies rather than science is being communicated [16]. The recent animated feature Avatar well exemplified this problem despite being one of the most highly grossing movies, and the praises heaped upon it as a conservation-themed blockbuster [18].…”

“…The concept of animations with conservation, ecological or broad environmental themes is not novel and dates back to the 1940s with Walt Disney's Bambi to the pivotal screening of FernGully: The Last Rainforest at the 1991 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, which became an icon of the global environmental movement [15,16,17].While many of these animations had implicit ecological nuances, others explicitly draw attention to the environmental issues as their primary focus [16], most notably Avatar which came under intense scrutiny by conservationists and the mass media [18,19]. Surprisingly, the potentials of utilising animation as tools in environmental communication is little addressed in the larger context of environmental media [16], with news and documentaries getting the bigger share of academic attention [20]. Even where discussed in research, only the sociological and cultural impacts of these films are evaluated [15].…”

Interactive Animation`S Possibilities And Limitations For Development Of Environmental Literacy For Pupils

“…On the other hand, there has also been negative attitude towards animated environmental films. Starosielski (2011) in detail describes the critique that environmental animation receives in the academic world. Animated environmental films are criticized for being opposite to complex, rational and scientific knowledge that would enable viewers to address environmental problems (Starosielski, 2011).…”

“…Starosielski (2011) in detail describes the critique that environmental animation receives in the academic world. Animated environmental films are criticized for being opposite to complex, rational and scientific knowledge that would enable viewers to address environmental problems (Starosielski, 2011). Cartoons, visual hyperbolization and simplification form a framework of environmental animation which does not comply with the discourse of balanced environmental philosophy and rational environmental issues faced by society.…”

“…This means that interactive animation may introduce environmental issues of distant places to students. Animation may transfer them into imperceptive, invisible world which cannot be caught in camera in reality; it may also be used to visualize environmental changes easily (Starosielski, 2011). Consequently, it may help overcome cognitive, emotional and geographical barriers as visual rendering of information improves thinking skills, understanding of a topic, recognition of ideas, whereas dynamic graphics of interactive animation may motivate students more than a static image (Mason, Lowe & Tornatora, 2013;Aydin, 2015).…”