Introduction

The chapter attempts to examine the (human) reception of moving images by considering the role of ‘affect’ – ‘the affective psycho-sensory complex’ – which people simply feel but find difficult to articulate in language. The paper focuses on the differences between digital aesthetics created by computer animation and analogue aesthetics in hand-drawn animation. Both are different ways to provide representations of reality. The development of 3D computer animation has sought to produce photorealistic images and brought about broader possibilities for creating verisimilar naturalistic films. In contrast, analogue animation, especially ‘conventional’ hand-drawn animation, depends on expressive form. The aim is not to duplicate or produce photographic reality, rather to appeal to our emotions, sensation, memory, imagination, and fantasy.

Recently, computer-generated imagery has become a part of the fabric of social life, from computer games to medical data images, from military training simulation to stock market data visualizations, from various advertisements to private photoshopping. Contemporary society is unable to escape the continuous flows of millions of computer-generated images that appear on ubiquitous screens. These images restlessly stimulate and influence our perception. The prime question here is the extent to which machine-generated images influence human embodied practices and feelings, such as experiences, emotion, sensation, and judgement.

The animation industry has often been characterized as a central part of the ‘fantasy factory’ since its emergence, with this feature further emphasized today through the use of advanced computer technologies. Yet hand-drawn animation still attracts a considerable audience and is often appraised as an art form that involves a sophisticated capacity to express human emotions and senses. Here, attention will focus on the influential Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki.

Conventional animation depends on an ordered sequence: hand-drawing images on cells; placing the set of image cells under the camera; and shooting a whole sequence of frames. With computer-generated imagery (CGI), the rendering process involves pixels and mathematical calculations for lighting, staging, framing, performance, and camera movements. Digital figures do not need to have a substantial form in the real world, relying on pixels and mathematical formulas for their existence. All these processes ‘are carried out within the computer’ (Furniss, 2007:174).