Software, Animation and the Moving Image (PDF)

Aylish Wood is a Reader in Film Studies at the School of Arts, University of Kent, UK.

"Wood's book is a very important contribution to our understanding of how digital animated images are created. Digital animated images are pervasive but much of the discourse around them centres on them as images, as represented spaces. In focusing on how the widely-used software Autodesk Maya is used to construct animated images, Wood takes us on a journey through 'more-than-representational space' to understand how the digital contours of contemporary moving image production are reshaping how we understand and relate to the world around us. The book synthesises compelling arguments from software studies and animation studies to reveal how users and producers make sense of what goes into the images. Here, then, excavating the operational logic of user interfaces is not some abstract and sterile exercise in coding, but a careful and detailed study of the interaction between the software and those using it. This is a really useful and readable intervention, drawing critically upon interviews with practitioners, 'how to' manuals, online tutorials and other paratextual elements of Maya's 'neighbourhood' the stuff that is usually taken-for-granted or overlooked. A critical production studies approach to animation software is long overdue and Wood's intriguing analysis is the first step down that road." - Paul Ward, Arts University, Bournemouth, UK