The Computer-Animated Film

Abstract

The Computer-Animated Film: Industry, Style and Genre is the first academic work to examine the genre identity of the computer-animated film, a global phenomenon of popular cinema that first emerged in the mid-1990s at the intersection of feature-length animated cinema and Computer-Generated Imagery (CGI). Widely credited for the revival of feature-length animated filmmaking within contemporary Hollywood, computer-animated films are today produced within a variety of national contexts and traditions. Covering thirty years of computer-animated film history, and analysing over 200 different examples, The Computer-Animated Film: Industry, Style and Genre argues that this international body of work constitutes a unique genre of mainstream cinema. It applies, for the very first time, genre theory to the landscape of contemporary digital animation, and identifies how computer-animated films can be distinguished in generic terms. This book therefore asks fundamental questions about the evolution of film genre theory within both animation and new media contexts. Informed by wider technological discourses and the status of animation as an industrial art form, The Computer-Animated Film: Industry, Style and Genre not only theorises computer-animated films through their formal properties, but connects elements of film style to animation practice and the computer-animated film’s unique production contexts.