Time-Critical Animation: Comics, Cartoons, Computers

Abstract

Digital animation was originally developed at scientific research laboratories, where it was seen as an ideal tool for scientific research due to its ability to visualize, analyze, and synthesize time-serial data. It was eventually adopted by the entertainment industry when higher image resolutions made it possible to produce photorealistic visual effects, yet it still has numerous applications in such fields as biology, meteorology, geology, engineering, mathematics, and physics. This paper will argue that the difference between analog and digital animation should be understood not in terms of the indexicality of the images but rather in terms of the temporalities of their material substrates – that is, the difference between the time-based medium of film and the time-critical medium of the computer. Such an approach not only offers an important contribution to the field of animation studies but also explains the continued importance of animation for contemporary scientific research.