COP Seminar 1 - Animation Categories

In our first seminar we looked at different animations that were quite strange but fitted into the different categories of animation. I learnt that animations can fit into categories but it's not particularly right to categorise things as everything slips in and out of these boundaries. The categories we looked at were: Formal, deconstructive, politics, abstract, re-narration paradigmatic, primal and intertextuality. Formal meant that it followed a structured pattern (eg- Road Runner) and every episode usually sticks to the same layout and although some things are repeated they can have different meanings each time and start to form different reactions. Deconstructive is an animation that makes you physically aware you are watching an animation and the audience are aware that it is not real life. Politics is self explanatory as it is an animation that aspires to have politics or is made as a result of political events or as a political message. Animation that is abstract doesn't usually have any human elements and uses lines, colours to convey it's message and does something quite different to the rest of the categories. When an animation falls under re-narration it's where it has the power to retell a story but only in the way that animation can, e.g- a full life-cycle in the space of five seconds. Paradigmatic is where animations work in dimensions and rules, they can either work within existing paradigms  or start to create their own and this is where they can start to rip paradigms apart and play with the ideas of them. If an animation falls under primal then it usually explores or shows what it is like to be inside the human essence e.g- inside the bood, the body, the brain ect. which is quite unique as only animation can explore this. Finally, intertextuality is where animations naturally slip into the different categories and cannot be set in just one.