Animation Research Centre

Animation in Context

The last few decades have witnessed a marked increase in production and audience of commercial and independent animation film, and a modest one in critical authorship. There is a marked difference of, and by the relative lag in academic response to the popularity and complexity of auteur and independent animation being produced, especially the output of higher education and graduate student films.

In part due to its fine-arts based diversity, integration of independent animation into genre-based, classic or experimental film studies remains problematic. For courses on animation film theory, aesthetics and history, the difficulty of finding detailed analyses of individual films and critical texts has been a daunting companion to instructing on the form. The animated realm is complete artifice, and describing it with existing methodologies is a major obstacle in determining the status of animation within cinematic and digital production and, consequently, within cinema studies as a whole.

Animation film is perhaps the most auteur form there is, bringing with it all the difficulties that this attribute bears. Part of the difficulty lies in the lack of consensus on a definition of the animated film and the overwhelming task of establishing criteria for corpi which enable a deeper study of the form.

The Animation Research Centre (ARC)

The Animation Research Centre (ARC) was established in 2000 to promote academic scholarship in the under-researched area of animation studies. With an emphasis on British and auteur animation, and less socio-historically oriented, the ARC initiates, fosters and engages with the interdisciplinary relationships between animation, visual and film theories, architecture and the fine arts.

These are some of the motivations behind a proposal for a Research Centre made by Prof. Norman Taylor in 1998 and initiated in the same year by Jill McGreal. In 2000, Suzanne Buchan was appointed to establish the ARC, an ambitious project ideally located at the University for the Creative Arts. Animation at Farnham has a long-standing tradition within the Faculty of Arts & Media.

The Animation Department was originally established by Oscar-winning animator Bob Godfrey, and over the years it has developed into one of the outstanding British animation programmes. The appointment of many noted international animators and theorists has contributed to the increasing excellence of the programme, and graduating students have a high placement in industry upon graduation.