Introduction

What do we already know about computer-generated animation? When Frozen (USA, 2013) or The Lego Movie (Australia, 2014) gain wide-spread acclaim, and publicity surrounding their success sparks various debates (about princesses in Disney or the nostalgia of Lego), the look of computer generated figures and storytelling practices have a wide reach. Such high profile features are only the tip of what’s out there, as computer animation is commonly behind visual effects in live-action films, forms the basis of all kinds of computer games, is widely used in making adverts and data visualizations, and found on many websites too. What we know about all these computer-generated animations is often based on what we see on the screen. Frequently this tells us about an increasing capacity to simulate or depict physical reality, whether as extraordinarily photoreal imagery in films such as Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (USA, 2014), amusing adverts like The Pony (UK, 2013) for Three (featuring a moon dancing Shetland pony), or the spread of touch screen smart phone and tablet games including Angry Birds (Finland, 2009), BADLAND (Finland, 2013) or Monument Valley (UK, 2014). Through television news reports and documentary based programs, animation’s facility to inform is visible as well. From this diverse range of increasingly pervasive animation, we can see and hear the ways in which computer animation software is a highly pliable technology whose capacity to become embedded in existing forms of storytelling, information sharing and marketing is fully exploited.