We invite chapter proposals for the second of four volumes of the Encyclopedia of Animation Studies: Techniques, Processes, Environments (Bloomsbury, 2024). The expansive four-volume series will showcase established and emerging scholarship on animation, including transdisciplinary approaches that consider the proliferating forms and roles of animation today. This second volume, edited by Dr. Franziska Bruckner and Dr. Alla Gadassik, focuses specifically on animation techniques, processes, and environments – how, where, and why animation is made and exhibited. 

This volume is committed to connecting insights of scholars and creative practitioners, including those working at intersections of theory and praxis, as well intersections of animation and other disciplines. The first quarter of the volume is dedicated to shorter essays (2,000 words) by animation practitioners, while the remaining sections, which are open to all contributors, will follow more conventional academic chapter lengths (7,000 words). The editors look forward to supporting authors with a range of experience and comfort level with academic publication. Contributing artists and scholars without full-time institutional affiliation will be offered a modest honorarium by the volume editors.

Chapter proposals should clearly align with one of the following four areas:

  • Techniques (shorter essays): reflections on specific animation techniques by creative practitioners who can contextualize those techniques in relationship to their own and other artists’ practices. Chapters that closely attend to more specific approaches than broad categories like ‘analog’ or ‘digital’ (for example, vector-based animation; pixel-based animation; procedural animation, etc.) are especially welcome.
  • Processes: essays that explore the nuances of animation production in particular contexts, which might include attention to animation labour; specific roles and stages of development in industrial and commercial animation; and/or considerations in different experimental processes.
  • Environments: essays that explore animation’s relationship to particular sites of exhibition and display; locate animation in specific intermedia environments; and/or consider the distinct forms animation can take depending on its site.
  • Forms: essays that provide deeper insight into the relationship between animation and its allied forms (for example, comics or kinetic sculptures), and/or explore a particular form of animation (for example, advertising or pornography) by attending to common themes, temporal structures, or modes of address.

Proposals should include a chapter title, an abstract (300 words), and a short author bio (50 words). Inquiries and questions in advance of proposal submission are welcome. Proposals should be submitted to one of the editors, Dr. Alla Gadassik (gadassik@ecuad.ca) or Dr. Franziska Bruckner (franziska.bruckner@fhstp.ac.at) by Friday, January 28, 2022. All received proposals will receive responses by March 1, 2022. First drafts of chapters will be due by August 2023 for scheduled publication in 2024.