Key Text: Animation Aesthetics

Whilst doing research over the last few weeks, I came across a text: Art In Motion: Animation Aesthetics by Maureen Furniss (2007). I felt that this text would be extremely beneficial to my dissertation, as the text focused on aesthetics and went into great detail about each element of aesthetics that were relevant and important to animation, but more importantly, had a large focus on aesthetics within 2D animation.

One element of this text that really took my by surprise was the section headed Mis-en-scene. Whilst I was aware that Mis-en-scene was an element of aesthetics, I was unaware that it was more than just the arrangement of scenery and surroundings within an animation. As the text points out, Mis-en-scene is more than just staging and camera angles, but is in fact made up of colour and line as well as background and sound. This altered what I was considering for my dissertation plan and made me think about how colour and line specifically affect animation and how story is perceived. Although I was aware that colour has an affect on animation and how it can alter how a viewer perceives what they are being shown, I wasn't familiar with the specific ways in which colour did this. Nor had I ever thought about how line could also affect meaning for a viewer. For instance, Furniss states that colours can "create space - a sense of openness and serenity or, perhaps, claustrophobia and anxiety" (Furniss, M. 2007: pg 73). This is something that I have never explored before and it has made me think about how important colour is regarding aesthetics and storytelling, which I will begin to look into in future research.