Animating Space

From Mickey to WALL-E

J. P. Telotte

Narrated by Robert A. K. Gonyo

Available from Audible

Book published by The University Press of Kentucky

Animators work within a strictly defined, limited space that requires difficult artistic decisions. The blank frame presents a dilemma for all animators, and the decision of what to include and leave out raises important questions about artistry, authorship, and cultural influence. In Animating Space: From Mickey to WALL-E, renowned scholar J. P. Telotte explores how animation has confronted the blank template, and how responses to that confrontation have changed. Focusing on American animation, Telotte tracks the development of animation in line with changing cultural attitudes toward space and examines innovations that elevated the medium from a novelty to a fully realized art form. From Winsor McCay and the Fleischer brothers to the Walt Disney Company, Warner Bros., and Pixar Studios, Animating Space explores the contributions of those who invented animation, those who refined it, and those who, in the current digital age, are using it to redefine the very possibilities of cinema.

J. P. Telotte is the professor of literature, communication, and culture at the Georgia Institute of Technology and author of Disney TV. He lives in Atlanta, Georgia.

REVIEWS:

“J.P. Telotte’s excellent new collection of essays by a variety of scholars ... explores the complex relationship between sf and television across the twentieth century into out own millennium.”

—Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts

“His timely book is both a historical study of animation and a means of giving theoretical grounding to it as a product of a cultural industry that has its roots in teh late 19th Century and has morphed ... its way into the second decade of the 21st. It is also an excellent and entertaining read.”

—The Midewest Book Review