James Trainor

This class introduces the traditional animation techniques of creating movement through successive drawings. Techniques include metamorphosis, walking cycles, holds, squash and stretch, blur and resistance. Students use the pencil test Lunch-Box to view their work . Students complete a series of exercises encouraging a full range of animation skills and a final project. Films illustrating drawn-animation techniques are screened regularly.

This class introduces the traditional animation techniques of creating movement through successive drawings. Techniques include metamorphosis, walking cycles, holds, squash and stretch, blur and resistance. Students use the pencil test Lunch-Box to view their work . Students complete a series of exercises encouraging a full range of animation skills and a final project. Films illustrating drawn-animation techniques are screened regularly.

This class introduces the traditional animation techniques of creating movement through successive drawings. Techniques include metamorphosis, walking cycles, holds, squash and stretch, blur and resistance. Students use the pencil test Lunch-Box to view their work . Students complete a series of exercises encouraging a full range of animation skills and a final project. Films illustrating drawn-animation techniques are screened regularly.

This class introduces the traditional animation techniques of creating movement through successive drawings. Techniques include metamorphosis, walking cycles, holds, squash and stretch, blur and resistance. Students use the pencil test Lunch-Box to view their work . Students complete a series of exercises encouraging a full range of animation skills and a final project. Films illustrating drawn-animation techniques are screened regularly.

This course covers the history of animated film, from its pre-cinematic beginnings to the beginning of the television era (ca. 1960). It traces the development of the Hollywood studio cartoon, along with parallel developments in European and Japanese animation and experimental and abstract works. Special emphasis is given to the evolution of formal animation techniques and their role in the shaping of the animation aesthetic.

Much attention is given to the groundbreaking work of Disney, the Fleischer studio, and the cartoons of Tex Avery and Chuck Jones. European animators are represented by Lotte Reiniger, Oskar Fischinger, and other experimenters. All films are screened chronologically, with a mix of short works and a handful of features.

There are weekly readings on the history of animation; a ten-page paper; and a final multiple-choice exam.

An interdisciplinary studio that develops skills specific to the challenges of writing for time-based projects, especially works in film, video, installation, and performance. The primary focus is in-class writing, a range of textual experiments, and workshop /critique of students' writing in relation to their own works-in-progress. We pay attention to 'invisible' texts--the writing before the script, free-writing, conceptual issues--as well as overt ones. Special emphasis is placed on developing the ear in work on monologue, dialogue, and voice-over. The class reads and discusses selected scripts and writings by artists, screens films and videos, attends exhibitions and performances, and performs close analyses (another form of 'reading') of texts.

Horror films use psychological forces and states of mind, such as fear, terror, and guilt, to show the consequences violating ethical, moral, religious, and social order. Science-fiction films take the good and evil of present-day society and transport them to another time, most often the future. Like classical and urban myths, these genres often offer cautionary tales. They use symbol and metaphor to show the relationship between individual actions and cultural values while critiquing the status quo. In examining both types of film, this course will also reveal something about the creation, circulation, representation, and function of mythic imagery and narratives in culture.