Frame by Frame: A Materialist Aesthetics of Animated Cartoons

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In this beautifully written and deeply researched study, Hannah Frank provides an original way to understand American animated cartoons from the Golden Age of animation (1920-1960). In the pre-digital age of the twentieth century, the making of cartoons was mechanized and standardized: thousands of drawings were inked and painted onto individual transparent celluloid sheets (called "cels") and then photographed in succession, a labor-intensive process that was divided across scores of artists and technicians. In order to see the art, labor, and technology of cel animation, Frank slows cartoons down to look frame by frame, finding hitherto unseen aspects of the animated image. What emerges is both a methodology and a highly original account of an art formed on the assembly line.

Author: Hannah Frank
Publisher: University of California Press
Published: 05/07/2019
Pages: 256
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.70lbs
Size: 8.90h x 6.00w x 0.80d
ISBN13: 9780520303621
ISBN10: 0520303628
BISAC Categories:
- Performing Arts | Film | Genres | Animated
- Performing Arts | Animation (see also Film | Genres | Animated)
- Technology & Engineering | Materials Science | Thin Films, Surfaces & Interfaces

About the Author
Hannah Frank (1984-2017) was Assistant Professor of Film Studies at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. Her work has been published in Critical Quarterly and Animation: An Interdisciplinary Journal, and she contributed a chapter to A World Redrawn: Eisenstein and Brecht in Hollywood.

Daniel Morgan is Associate Professor of Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Chicago and is author of Late Godard and the Possibilities of Cinema.