Animation and Advertising

by Malcolm Cook (Editor), Kirsten Moana Thompson (Editor)

Overview

Throughout its history, animation has been fundamentally shaped by its application to promotion and marketing, with animation playing a vital role in advertising history. In individual case study chapters this book addresses, among others, the role of promotion and advertising for  anime, Disney, MTV, Lotte Reiniger, Pixar and George Pal, and highlights American, Indian, Japanese, and European examples. This collection reviews the history of famous animation studios and artists, and rediscovers overlooked ones. It situates animated advertising within the context of a diverse intermedial and multi-platform media environment, influenced by print, radio and digital practices, and expanding beyond cinema and television screens into the workplace, theme park, trade expo and urban environment. It reveals the part that animation has played in shaping our consumption of particular brands and commodities, and assesses the ways in which animated advertising has both changed and been changed by the technologies and media that supported it, including digital production and distribution in the present day. Challenging the traditional privileging of art or entertainment over commercial animation, Animation and Advertising establishes a new and rich field of research, and raises many new questions concerning particular animation and media histories, and our methods for researching them.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783030279394
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan
Publication date:	12/17/2019
Series:	Palgrave Animation
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	55 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Malcolm Cook is a Lecturer in Film at the University of Southampton, UK. His book Early British Animation: From Page and Stage to Cinema Screens was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2018. He is currently researching the role of advertising in the history of animation, and has published several chapters on this topic, which appear in The Animation Studies Reader (2018) and Aardman Animations: Beyond Stop-Motion  (forthcoming).

Kirsten Moana Thompson is a Professor of Film Studies at Seattle University, US, and writes on animation, color and Pacific studies. Recent work includes the material color history of Disney and Faber Birren, advertising in Times Square, Ludwig Von Drake and the Disney promotional film, Egyptian sponsored film and the intersectional aesthetic surfaces of Moana. She is currently working on several new books, including Color, Visual Culture and American Cel Animation and Bubbles.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Introduction to Animation and Advertising.- I: Revisionist Histories.- Chapter 2 George Pal’s ‘Cavalcade of Colours, Music and Dolls’: 1930s Advertising Films in Transnational Contexts.- Chapter 3 Sponsored Silhouettes: Lotte Reiniger’s ‘useful’ films in Britain.- Chapter 4 Magic Highways and Autopias: Disney and automobile advertising.- II: Intermediality.- Chapter 5 Animation and Commercial Display in Britain during the 1920s.- Chapter 6 Live Electrically with Reddy Kilowatt, Your Electrical Servant.- Chapter 7 ‘A Very Flexible Medium’: The Ministry of Information and Animated Propaganda Films on the Home Front.- III: Brands.- Chapter 8 Animation Across Borders: Schicht Fat Factory and its Transmedia and Transnational Advertising Strategies.- Chapter 9 Just Do It, Impossible is Nothing: Animation and Sports Commercials.- Chapter 10 ‘Don’t Mind Me, I’m Just a Dermatophyte’: The Use of Animation in Direct-to-Consumer Pharmaceutical Television Advertising.- IV: Television.- Chapter 11 Beyond Anime? Rethinking Japanese Animation History through Early Animated Television Commercials.- Chapter 12 The ‘Quasi-Artistic Venture’: MTV Idents and Alternative Animation Culture.- Chapter 13 ‘Stupid Little Stories’: Television Interstitial and Advertising Style in the Professional Culture of Indian Animation.- V: Digital and Contemporary.- Chapter 14 Promoting Computer Graphics Research: The tech demos of SIGGRAPH.- Chapter 15 ‘Movin’ to a different beat’: Commercial Pixar and the Simulated Ordinary.- Chapter 16 ‘Feel Everything’: Animation, Advertising and Affect in Cinema and Television Idents.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“Animation and Advertising is a fascinating book—and one whose time has come. Though long marginalised by animation scholars, animated advertising can now be seen as a key object linking film history to the broader history of consumerism: its techniques, technologies and spaces. This is the first book to examine such practices from a global perspective, with sixteen rich essays that cut across historical epochs, geographical borders and media boundaries.” (Michael Cowan, Professor of Film Studies, University of St Andrews, UK )

“Advertising has shaped modern media, but animation has shaped advertising in turn. From 19^th century lantern slides to today’s computer graphics, animation practices, pioneers, and processes have profoundly changed how goods are sold and bought. In tracing this history across fifteen eye-opening case studies, Animation and Advertising revises the familiar narrative of art against industry, showing us that advertisers never acted outside of or against culture, but remain a vital and lasting part in it.” (Patrick Vonderau, Professor in Media and Communication Studies, Martin Luther University Halle, Germany)

“Animation and Advertising is a wonderful collection of essays. The topics covered demonstrate the diverse areas in which animation has traction and locates animated advertising at an intersection of different media, with transmedia and intermediality often at the forefront of the discussions.” (Aylish Wood, Professor of Animation and Film, University of Kent, UK)