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The Computer-Animated Film
Industry, Style and Genre
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Book Presentation:
Re-frames the computer-animated film as a new genre of contemporary cinema
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 persuasively argues that this body of work constitutes a unique genre of mainstream cinema. Informed by wider technological discourses and the status of animation as an industrial art form, the book 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.
Key Features
• Provides a wide-ranging focus on a multitude of animation studios, companies, facilities, divisions and subsidiaries in Hollywood and beyond
• Supported throughout by close textual analysis and clearly marked case studies
• Expands the critical examination of computer-animated films by combining animation and film theory together with theories of animation practice, industry papers and original studio production memosCase Studies
• Shark Tale (2004)
• Hoodwinked! (2006)
• Flushed Away (2006)
• Over the Hedge (2006)
• The Good Dinosaur (2015)
• Frozen (2013)
• Zootopia (2016)
• Ratatouille (2007)
• Antz (1998)
• A Bug’s Life (1998)
• Wall-E (2008)
• Toy Story 3 (2010)
• Toy Story 2 (1999)
• Cars (2005) / Cars 2 (2011)
• Happy Feet (2006)
• Sausage Party (2016)
• Monsters, Inc. (2001)
• Rise of the Guardians (2012)
• Despicable Me 2 (2013) / Minions (2015)
• Surf’s Up (2007)
• Bolt (2008)
About the Author:
Christopher Holliday teaches Film Studies and Liberal Arts at King’s College London specializing in film genre, international film history, digital media, film technology and animation. He has published several book chapters and journal articles on contemporary Hollywood animation, and is currently co-editing a collection of essays that examines the historical, cultural and theoretical points of intersection between fantasy and animation.
Press Reviews:
The Computer-Animated Film is ambitious in its scope and comprehensive in its coverage, which alone would make a go-to text in the still-comparatively underserved field of contemporary animation. On top of this, its intelligent critique and potentially controversial genre-based approach make it an engaging read for experienced animation scholars.'– Sam Summers, animationstudies 2.0
Holliday writes with an appealing style, covering the changing fortunes of the computer-animation industry with verve and appeal.– Paul Taberham, Arts University Bournemouth, Projections 14.2
Holliday persuasively argues that contemporary computer animation feature films constitute a genre in their own right. Re-positioning genre through fresh configurations of how computer animated films relate to each other, he analyzes their ideologically-charged formal and technical characteristics, successfully revealing new systems of textual properties and affordances. Insisting that the very ‘animatedness’ of computer animation invokes a revision of the traditional cartoon, conventional film tropes and digital moving images, Holliday properly traces the influence of animation in the re-invention of mainstream movies per se.– Professor Paul Wells, Animation Academy, Loughborough University
See the publisher website: Edinburgh University Press
> From the same author:
Fantasy/Animation (2020)
Connections Between Media, Mediums and Genres
Dir. Christopher Holliday and Alexander Sergeant
> On a related topic:
Rediscovered Classics of Japanese Animation (2025)
The Adaptation of Children's Novels into the World Masterpiece Theater Series
The Life and Times of Betty Boop (2023)
The 100-Year History of an Animated Icon
Contemporary Hollywood Animation (2023)
Style, Storytelling, Culture and Ideology Since the 1990s
by Noel Brown
Cultural Guide to Anime and Manga (2023)
by Pamela Gossin and Marc Hairston
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