Home« 101 Theory Not Found » - Jeux vidéo X animation

« 101 Theory Not Found » - Jeux vidéo X animation

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Published on Wednesday, July 12, 2023

Abstract

Français English

This conference aims to outline an interdisciplinary approach to video games based on the thoughts and methods of “animated cinema”, but also to lay the foundations for a study of animation in video games. Considering video games from the perspective of animation, and vice versa, raises questions that are both economic, technical, and aesthetic. These questions are likely to interest professionals from both industries as well as academic scholars. To what extent do video games integrate and engage with “animated cinema”? Conversely, do video games open up new possibilities for animation techniques? What are the specific modes of storytelling and reception landscapes that emerge from the intersection of animated cinema and video games? What markets does it define?

Announcement

Français English

Argument

When scholars in game studies turn their attention to the moving images of video games, they do so, with a few exceptions1, from the perspective of cinema. However, thinking the image on the basis of film theories often leads to perpetuating their blind spots, a fairly common oversight being the ad hoc category known as “animation cinema”.

In fact, the first known occurrence of this expression dates back to 1953 and is attributed to André Martin, who used it to group and legitimize various marginalized cinematographies (such as animated films, puppet films, animated engravings, scratching on film, etc.) under a common technical principle: “frame-by-frame production”. Martin sought to establish a community of crafts beyond “cartoons”, without reducing it to experimental cinema, giving rise to what he called “animation cinema”2. This field articulates at the same time a technique and a specific idea of cinema : it is based on an inverted model where “the living is no longer the convention”3, presenting catabolic bodies and entropic images4 that defy classical theories predominantly constructed on live-action cinematography.

However, it is striking to note that despite the widely recognized inversion of power relations between animation and cinema5, famously coined by Lev Manovich6, “animation cinema" remains a minor and marginalized field within academic research, often overlooked by film scholars. This omission seems to persist in game studies as well while – although the photographic codes traditionally holds primary importance when considering cinematographic images – animation techniques are at the heart of video game image production. On the other end of the spectrum, a similar problem arises : the history of digital animation often neglects the development of animation within the field of video games. Beyond the question of animation techniques common to both mediums, the aesthetic reflections and issues of animation cinema can yet significantly enhance the understanding of video games as an art form.

Therefore, we aim to outline an approach of video games based on the thinkings and methods of animation cinema, laying the foundations for studying animation within video games. Indeed, considering the links between animation cinema and video games proves fruitful, both technically and aesthetically, for understanding images, the industry, video games, and animation. In fact, designations such as “computer games" and “electronic games", which coexisted at the time of the medium’s birth, have now disappeared, leaving an overwhelming dominance of the term “video games" (at least in France), underscoring the importance of moving images within the medium. Animation thus appears as one of the current cores of video game, constituting one of its enabling conditions, even in cases where video game techniques take more ambiguous paths, such as motion capture or performance capture, which have sparked debates among scholars regarding their classification as animation cinema territory or not. We consequently find it essential to examine the connections between animation cinema and video games : their legacies, alterations, themes, and common actors.

Furthermore, besides their coincidental emergence in the 1960’s (the modern era of cinema, during which the concept and community of animation cinema emerged and solidified), video games almost systematically employ digital animation techniques today, and often engage with shared imaginaries found in contemporary animated series and films. Do these connections go beyond cosmetic aspects and penetrate the mechanics of gameplay ? What does it imply to consider video game images from the perspective of animation, and to view animation as a core constituent of the audiovisual flow ? Do video games offer new forms of expression for animation filmmakers ? Similarly, what are the new cartographies and ideas that arise when we consider action and feedback not only as the singularity of video games but as the guiding principle in the contemporary development of new relationships (to technology, art, media, others, …) ?

Thematic axes

In this context, communication proposals can fit into one or several of the following thematic axes, without necessarily being limited to them :

Logic of creation

This first axis aims to study the role of animation in video game development, as well as the points of convergence between the two industries. It covers topics such as transmedia/media-mix, collaborative animations and games, hand-made/material cinema and video games, creation as a playful practice and playing as a creative activity, machinimas, the role of animators in the video game industry, etc.

Economic and cultural history of techniques 

Ahistory of animation in video games is still to be written, and would encompasses – for instance – software and hardware developments, evolution of animation techniques in video games, trajectories of industry actors, relationships between science, art, and industry ; the elaboration of artificial intelligences, aesthetics based on simulated materials, data and code libraries, interfaces of creation ; as well as the place of animation in the imagination of developers.

Mutant architectures

Unlike live-action cinema, animation often presents space as a representation that embraces its identity as an image, where the material is submerged in the immaterial and vice versa. It seems therefore relevant to consider video game spaces through this lens : animations and materiality of virtual spaces, transformation of reality through games, political interactivities within virtual spaces and spatial politics of interaction/control ; virtual reality, augmented reality, sandbox games, data visualization and spatialization, procedural animation, interpolation-based animation, non-Euclidean or liminal spaces, relationships of depth and flatness within images ; software corruptions, glitch aesthetics, noises and signals, etc.

Moving letters

The movement and animation of texts within video game images also bear multiple interrogations. This axis covers topics such as animated texts and animations generated from texts, ASCII7 arts and games, command line games, data interpretation models, relationships between computer languages and code(s) of reality, recurrences of comics in animated films and video games (speech bubbles, embossing, shading of cells, etc.), procedural rhetoric, user interfaces (UI) and heads-up displays (HUD)8, inventories, etc.

Thanatomorphic bodies

Lastly, we propose to study body animations in video games and the questions they raise, including motion capture, avatar and NPC9 animations, embodiment and simulation issues, logics and designs of birth (spawn, respawn), death and survival (die & retry, survival, beat'em all, etc.) ; performances and role-plays (of animators, of players), choreographies, dances, and transformations of images and games ; scripted actions, automatons, players and machines agency, character design, creation and customization in games (influence of "choices" on the fate of these bodies, skins economies, etc.).

Submission guidelines and useful informations

Professionals and scholars are invited to submit their communication proposals (approximately 300 words) in French or English, along with a short bibliography and a brief biographical statement.

Proposals should be sent to 101tnfjvxa@liste.parisnanterre.fr

before September 10th, 2023.

Selections will be announced by email.

The conference will be held both in-person at the INHA (Paris) and digitally on December 14th and 15th, 2023.

Organizing Committee

  • Hervé Joubert-Laurencin (Université Paris Nanterre)
  • Xavier Kawa-Topor (NEF Animation)
  • Jean-Baptiste Massuet (Université Rennes 2)
  • Benjamin Méra (Université Paris Nanterre)
  • Antoine Rigaud (Université Paris Nanterre)

Notes

1. see for instance SZTULMAN Paul, “Les explorateurs des abîmes", in Boyer Elsa, Aktypi Madeleine, During Elie, Higuinen Erwan, Siety Emmanuelle, Sztulman Paul (dir.), Voir les jeux vidéo, perception, construction, fiction, Paris, Bayard, 2012; ARSENAULT Dominic et PERRON Bernard, “De-framing video games from the light of cinema", in Game: The Italian Journal of Game Studies, n°4, Reggio de Calabre, Ass.ne Culturale Ludica, 2015 ; et WARDS Paul, “Video game as remediated animation" in King Geoff and Krzywinska Tanya (dir.), ScreenPlay. Cinema / Videogames / Interfaces, Londres, Wallflower Press, 2002

2. see JOUBERT-LAURENCIN Hervé, La Lettre volante. Quatre essais sur le cinéma d'animation, Paris, Presses de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, 1997, & JOUBERT-LAURENCIN Hervé, « André Martin, Inventor of Animation Cinema : Prolegomena for a History of Terms », in Karen Beckman (ed.), Animating Film Theory, Durham, Duke University Press, 2014

3. Ibid., p. 34.

4. see TOMASOVIC Dick, Le Corps en abîme, sur la figurine et le cinéma d'animation, Aix-en-Provence, Rouge Profond, 2006.

5. On this particular topic, see JOUBERT-LAURENCIN Hervé, “Le cinéma d'animation n'existe plus", Acmé, n°1, octobre 2008.

6. “Rear projection and blue screen photography, matte paintings and glass shots, mirrors and miniatures, push development, optical effects and other techniques which allowed filmmakers to construct and alter the moving images, and thus could reveal that cinema was not really different from animation, were pushed to cinema's periphery by its practitioners, historians and critics. In the 1990s, with the shift to computer media, these marginalized techniques moved to the center." Lev Manovich, The Language of New Media, Cambridge, The MIT Press, 2001, p. 253

7. “American Standard Code for Information Interchange" originally refers to a computer standard for encoding typographic characters, and later to practices and aesthetics that treat these characters as elementary components of an image (see, for example, the compiled archives at https://www.asciiart.eu/).

8. "User Interface" and "Heads Up Display" are often used interchangeably, but the HUD is actually a specific form of UI that mimics the physical HUDs found in aircraft, submarines, etc., from which it borrows its name.

9. “Non-Playable Characters” or “Non-Player Character”

Places

  • INHA - 2 rue Vivienne
    Paris, France (75)

Event attendance modalities

Hybrid event (on site and online)


Date(s)

  • Sunday, September 10, 2023

Keywords

  • jeu vidéo, animation, cinéma d'animation, esthétique, histoire de l'art et des media, philosophie de l'art et des techniques, sociologie culturelle

Contact(s)

  • Benjamin Méra
    courriel : benjamin [dot] m [at] parisnanterre [dot] fr

Information source

  • Benjamin Méra
    courriel : benjamin [dot] m [at] parisnanterre [dot] fr

License

CC-BY-4.0 This announcement is licensed under the terms of Creative Commons - Attribution 4.0 International - CC BY 4.0 .

To cite this announcement

Antoine Rigaud, Benjamin Méra, « « 101 Theory Not Found » - Jeux vidéo X animation », Call for papers, Calenda, Published on Wednesday, July 12, 2023, https://doi.org/10.58079/1bk4

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