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Paul Taberham’s impressive study of film animation was released earlier this month. The title brings to mind poetics as an aesthetic approach, a major concern of David Bordwell, who studies film. Taberham was actually influenced by David’s writing and my writing. As he said in the preface:
Live-action film and television have received continued critical attention in the field of poetics (see Bordwell 2007; Cavendish 2013; Mittell 2015; Çağlayan 2018), but animation, in contrast, has been only peripherally addressed. Although animation and live-action filmmaking share a common formal language through shot composition, editing, color, sound design, etc., significant differences between the two remain underexplored. This book seeks to bridge that gap by positioning itself as a book focused on animation by David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson. Cinematic Art: An Introduction (first published in 1979 and now in its 14th edition), is a pedagogical distillation of a wide-ranging project. Provides a systematic analysis of film composition, with particular emphasis on form, style, and narrative techniques. good night cinematicsThe book provides a structured approach while paying particular attention to the similarities and differences between animation and live-action media. [p. 5]
As can be seen from the table of contents, Taberham achieved his goal admirably.
Rather than imitating an organization cinematics“Affinities and divergence” are evident. Two chapters discuss character design, a technique not applicable to live-action video. One is devoted to cinematography, a very different process from animation.
Another significant difference is cinematicsOne of the things that I think works very well is that each chapter explains the history of the subject in the field of animation, with relevant examples. The techniques of animation have changed over time at intervals that do not always coincide with the technical changes in live-action films, and following those transformations helps the reader better understand these techniques. Moreover, this approach provides many, many simple examples from a wide range of movies and TV series. I am in awe of the number of examples mentioned. (Having a child as young as Taberham certainly helps).
134 of these examples are described. However, that number is misleadingly low since most contain multiple frames, as shown on the page below. I’m sure Taberham could have drawn a lot more, but publishers don’t tend to like that kind of thing, especially for most colors. When it comes to color, the illustrations are highly reproducible. (I’m judging from the e-book I read.) Also see the frame at the bottom in the sound chapter.
The results provide justification for applying poetics to animation. Let Taberham explain why. After an excellent summary of poetics from Aristotle to Bordwell and Thompson, he writes:
This approach is especially suitable for animation. Because the artist’s touch is present in every detail. Movement, design, performance, lighting and sound are never secondary. These are parameters created at every step in the pipeline. This visibility turns animation into a clear laboratory for poetics. You can see how constraints become styles, how tools invite specific solutions, how studios stabilize a house look, and how artists negotiate and improve or overturn these norms. [p. 40]
This book does all of this brilliantly.
poetics of animation This book is intended for both those who simply want to read about the subject and those who use the subject as a textbook in the growing course of study as an art other than animated filmmaking. As Taberham discusses animation tools, I must say that there are quite a few technical terms and brand names that are unfamiliar to me. Students will need some help with this terminology, but the important thing is to understand how the introduction of this term affected the production of animated films.
Of course, you can order this book from Amazon, where the e-book list price is $27.95. It is temporarily more advantageous to order e-books directly from Berghahn. That’s because they’re having an ebook summer sale for just $13.97.
This entry was posted on Monday | Submitted under Movies Comments on August 24, 2026 at 1:05pm. Currently both comments and pings are closed.