571234

research-article2015
ANM0010.1177/1746847715571234AnimationLinares

Article

animation:

Criteria for Defining Animation: an interdisciplinary journal

2015, Vol. 10(1) 42­–57
© The Author(s) 2015
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of Animation in the Advent of

DOI: 10.1177/1746847715571234
anm.sagepub.com

Digital Moving Images

Omar O Linares Martinez

Abstract
The definition of animation has become problematic with the advent of digital media. The
informational character of digital moving images has made it difficult to distinguish between what
is animated and what is a reproduction of recorded movement. Previous definitions of animation,
as a non-recorded (non-live action) illusion of motion and as a frame-by-frame production, do
not encompass the automation of many digital illusions of motion, nor do they describe the way
in which some digital moving images derive from records of movement. In this light, this article
contends that animation can be distinguished in digital media by virtue of traits specific to its solely
illusory motion and that are general to all animation production techniques, whether analogue
or digital. The article develops a set of criteria to emphasize animation’s illusion of motion; it
also examines which aspects are shared with other moving images and which are exclusive to
animation. Additionally, the author deals with the persistence of the index in digital media and the
authorship of automatic animations.

Keywords
animation, authorship, definitions of animation, digital media, index

Introduction: Approaches and some problems with past

definitions
This article aims to define animation as a distinct type of moving image with solely illusory move-
ment. To this end, the source of illusory movement becomes the key axiom from which to derive a
set of criteria that identify and describe animation. These criteria are meant to apply to the different
animation techniques, whether they are analogue or digital, frame-by-frame or automatic, inten-
tional or accidental, that generate illusory movement by producing and displaying an artificial
arrangement of graphic positions without reproducing the positions of real-time movement.1

Corresponding author:
Omar O Linares Martinez
Email: Olinares01@gmail.com

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Martinez 43

Ultimately, moving images derived from records of real-time movement, whether these records are
photographic visuals or not, are contrasted with animation.
A special emphasis is given to distinguishing animated from recorded moving images in the
digital medium, since digitized and digitally generated moving images have problematized previ-
ous definitions of animation. These problems are due mostly to digital media’s informational char-
acter and the possible manipulation and automation it allows. Nonetheless, this article suggests that
some aspects from analogue media are shared with digital media, namely the intervallic display of
illusory motion and the index of a real-time movement.
One of the main arguments that dismisses distinguishing animation is that because digital mov-
ing images are generated from information, the images from recorded moving images are dissoci-
ated from the index of their photographic record and their real-time movements (Clark, 2005: 143;
Prince, 1996: 28, 34); because of this dissociation, it is argued that all digital moving images
become modes of animation (Cholodenko, 2006: 34, 36; Clark, 2005: 143, 144, 147). Another
argument is that because digital moving images can be automatically generated in real-time and
from computer code or from records of real-time movement, in those instances animation could not
be defined as a non-recorded moving image (Clark, 2005: 148).
Both arguments impact three definitions of animation: animation defined by its individual
frame-by-frame production, which contrasts with cinema’s automatic recording of movement; ani-
mation as solely illusory movement, which contrasts with cinema’s visual reconstitution of a real-
time movement; and animation as the moving image that is not recorded from a real-time movement,
which is mentioned in the above paragraph and that shares some problems of the other two defini-
tions. In the first case, animation defined by its individual frame-by-frame production has encom-
passed multiple pictorial techniques and emphasized the animator’s direct intervention in the
making of the sequence of images. In digital media, some animation software can be considered
under this definition when it allows the animator to set key frames and only automatizes in-between
frames, for instance 3D software like Maya or vector-based programs like Adobe Flash. However,
this definition becomes problematic when the animator does not arrange the sequence of graphic
positions and instead a computer program does this automatically. This automation of the illusion
of motion may derive from registers of some kind, such as registers of real-time movement, as in
motion capture, or solely by the execution of computer code, as in generative or procedural anima-
tions (see section ‘Automatically generated moving images and the programmer as animator’).2
In the second case, animation defined as solely illusory movement has contrasted with cinema’s
illusory reconstitution of recorded real-time movement because animation’s illusory movement
has no precedent in a real-time movement; rather, as stop motion animation analysts and others
have highlighted, animation’s movement does not exist or did not exist as the movement it depicts
(Ivins-Hulley, 2008: 60–66; Joule, 2011; Weihe, 2006). Theorist Laura Ivins-Hulley (2008: 61)
points out that: ‘In many forms of stop motion animation, we watch a three-dimensional object, so
that the performance carries a paradoxical indexicality: the puppet tangibly exists outside the film,
but its movement does not.’ However, when the image is graphically artificial but its illusion of
motion reconstitutes a real-time movement, this definition is difficult to apply because the moving
image is not a visual index, yet it is an index of movement. Once more, motion capture provides an
example since it applies recorded movement to generate the illusion of motion of digital tridimen-
sional models. An example of this is the live capture of The Adventures of Tintin (Spielberg, 2011).
The problems with both definitions derive from confusion between the artificial image and the
artificial movement; therefore, part of the problem is distinguishing between animated and recorded
movement, a distinction found in the source of animation’s illusion of motion, which is the arrange-
ment of its graphic positions. This manipulation of the arrangement of graphic positions has been
described by some animators as the main locus of their craft. One well-known description is

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44 animation: an interdisciplinary journal 10(1)

Norman McLaren’s ‘Animation is not the art of drawings that move, but rather the art of move-
ments that are drawn. What happens between each frame is more important than what happens on
each frame’ (in Furniss, 2007: 5); less known but more explicit is his distinction between the ‘gra-
phism’, or making of the image, from the ‘manipulation of the differences between successive
frames’ constituting the animator’s practice (McLaren in Sifianos, 1995: 66). The arrangement of
graphic positions as the source of solely illusory movement is the axiom from which the following
criteria derive.

Criteria for defining animation

The following two criteria and accompanying sub-criteria focus on explaining what animation is
rather than what it is not. This approach can be deemed positive because it relies on the presence
of specific traits to explain animation. A more common approach has been defining animation by
the absence of some traits, that is, animation defined as the moving image that is not recorded
from a real-time movement. Since such definition implies the absence of recorded real-time
movement, it is here deemed negative. Both approaches are useful for explaining animation, but
the negative definition is insufficient in the absence or difficulty of identifying those traits that
animation is not supposed to have; it also makes animation’s definition subservient to the defini-
tion of other moving image practices (namely that of cinema); and, finally, it can be derived as a
consequence of a positive approach. Hence, a positive criterion is presented first. Additionally,
application of these criteria requires a review of the intervallic display that results in illusory
motion and the concept of indexical contiguity with a real-time movement; for this, Gilles
Deleuze’s theories of cinema’s reconstitution of movement and Charles Sander’s Peirce’s concept
of index will be reviewed.

First Criterion: Criterion of artificiality of movement or positive criterion

Animation is the moving image with produced and solely illusory movement. Its illusion of motion
results from the creation or generation of a set of graphic positions with enough differences from
each other to produce an intervallic illusion of motion.
This is an ontological characteristic because it refers to the particular mode of production of
animation and to the specific relation such mode has with the resulting illusion. It is a condition for
animation to manifest itself and is general to all animation processes, digital or analogue, inten-
tional or accidental, by which animation is produced (see Sub-criteria of source, Note on intervallic
illusion, later in the article). This criterion applies to an illusory movement’s source, which must be
identified. This requires description of the mode of production, which currently is the sequential
arrangement and intervallic display of a series of images. Such process is here referred to as inter-
vallic illusion of motion and is explained as follows.

Note on the intervallic illusion of motion.  Intervallic illusion of motion here refers to the periodic and
sequential display of a series of images that results in an illusion of movement for a viewer’s per-
ception, for which each image bears slight differences in the position of similar graphic elements.
This type of illusion is applicable to digital illusions of motion, from feature films to a computer
screen’s periodic updating of ‘movement’ in its graphic user interface. Theorist Gilles Deleuze
describes this intervallic display of images as corresponding to a ‘mechanical’ and ‘homogeneous’
time (Deleuze, 1986: 1); he applies this ‘mechanical’ and ‘homogeneous’ rate of time to explain
cinema as a visual record and reconstitution of a real-time movement, as a set of photographic
records of a movement whose periodic and serial capture has the same periodicity and arrangement

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Martinez 45

for those photographs’ intervallic display. Hence for Deleuze, ‘the essence of the cinematographic
movement-image lies in extracting from vehicles or moving bodies the movement which is their
common substance (p. 23). Thus, cinema can be defined as a visual reconstitution of movement.
However, in animation, as William Schaffer (2006: 457, 464) notes, the intervallic display does
not match the intervallic capture of a real-time movement – it does not reproduce movement –
rather in animation, the series of image production is intervallic only to produce the illusion of
motion. Both animation and cinema are distinct instances of the intervallic illusion of motion, and
animation techniques preceded and partly engendered cinema’s visual reconstitution of movement.
Examples abound with artifacts like the magic lanterns or optical devices like the phenakistoscope
and zoopraxiscope (Manovich, 2000: 51; Solomon, 1983: 9–11). Animation and cinema can be
better catalogued as animated and reconstituted illusions of motion. Reconstituted illusions of
motion reproduce a real-time movement and would include cinema’s visual records but also illu-
sions of motion derived from non-optical records of movement, which digital motion capture
exemplifies. In this case the distinction with animated illusory movement remains.
The latter is possible because the mode of production of both illusions of movement remains
distinct in regard to the source of the arrangement of their images. Here, consequently, the graphic
positions of a reconstituted illusion of motion match the positions and order of a real-time move-
ment. For reconstituted moving images, the intervallic order of the capture of positions corre-
sponds with that of their intervallic display. For animation, the examination of the source of the
arrangement of its graphic positions can identify and describe it in two ways: by distinction of the
time of its production as non-synchronous with that of its resulting illusory motion and by differ-
entiation of its possible sources for the arrangement of images.

Sub-criteria of non-synchronicity of production of illusory movement.  These two sub-criteria derive from
the First Criterion and describe the non-simultaneity between an animated moving image produc-
tion and its display. The sub-criterion of non-contiguity is limited to animation whose production
is not immediately displayed as an illusory movement (i.e. in real-time); the sub-criterion of non-
continuity applies to all animation but also to all recorded moving images since both rely on the
intervallic display of their imagery.
Sub-criterion of non-contiguous time of production: In most animated moving images, the pro-
duction of a sequence of images occurs in a time that is different from that of its display as an illu-
sion of motion.
This sub-criterion is based on an understanding of contiguity as the correlation of differentiated
elements that are co-joined in time or space, that is, contiguity is the adjacent character of two
things. The junction between these elements may be causal or associative or both but, if this junc-
tion is used to refer one element to another, such a junction would be indexical. This means that
one element would be an index of the other by virtue of their correlated presence (i.e. one is there,
therefore the other one is too) (see Note on the Index in this section, under Second Criterion). This
contiguity is used in many digital moving images that derive from indexical registers (see sections
‘Digital moving images derived from records of real-time movement’ and ‘Note on index-based
animation’ in ‘Automatically generated moving images and the programmer as animator’, further
in this article). In the case of this sub-criterion, non-contiguity refers to the disparity between ani-
mation’s time of production and the time of its illusory movement. It refers to the time taken to
produce the animation and how it is not the same time of the illusory movement.
This sub-criterion does not refer to a contiguity with the source, which can be a visual index
(e.g. a photograph, an imprint) or an index of some process (see section ‘Automatically generated
moving images and the programmer as animator’). This again is the paradox highlighted by stop
motion and applicable to almost all animation: the disparity between the time of creation and the

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46 animation: an interdisciplinary journal 10(1)

time of illusory movement of an animation. The disparity has the consequence of hiding the anima-
tor’s labor and displacing it (Ivins-Hulley, 2008: 62; Joule, 2011; Wells 2006: 7; Weihe, 2006: 41).
However, this sub-criterion has limited validity to describe animation because it excludes anima-
tions whose arrangement of graphic positions is produced and displayed immediately by a real-
time process (excluding real-time movement); that is, when the display is contiguous with the
production. For instance, it does not apply to real-time renderings of index registers, like John
Klima’s ecosystem’s real-time visualizations of stock market information (see Russett, 2009). In
this instance, the display is contiguous with its production. Neither does this sub-criterion refer to
the contiguity of cinema or other movement-derived illusions of motion, because these moving
images’ contiguity is between their illusory (reconstituted) movement and the real-time movement
of their source (see Second Criterion below). For movement-derived illusions of motion, contigu-
ity between their time of production and that of their display would apply in the sense of ‘live’
video capture or other real-time displays.
Sub-criterion of non-continuity: Animation’s illusion of movement is not continuous, it is inter-
vallic, where continuous movement refers to the quality of an unbroken trajectory.3
Since it refers to the intervallic display that makes possible the illusion of motion, this sub-
criterion also applies to cinema and other recorded moving images. Moreover, it applies to analogue
and digital records of movement that rely on the intervallic illusion of motion. As a sub-criterion for
animation, it helps detect and describe animation’s source of illusory movement – not necessarily
the source of its images (see sections ‘Digital moving images derived from records of real-time
movement’ and ‘Automatically generated moving images and the programmer as animator’).

Sub-criteria of source types.  Animation can be characterized according to its two general types of
sources, agential and causal, where agency in regard to animation refers to the deliberate determi-
nation of illusory movement by a (human) agent, while causality refers to cause and effect pro-
cesses, whether accidental or systemic.
Sub-criterion of agential source or of agential animation: Agential animation refers to animated
illusions of motion whose arrangement of images is deliberately determined by an animator’s
manipulation of the rate of change of graphic positions. This is, when a person intentionally deter-
mines the order of a sequence of graphic positions to produce the illusion of motion, without
recording such order from a real-time movement (see Second Criterion). Additionally, the agent’s
determination of graphic positions can denote his or her imagined conception of movement, which
could describe the agent’s particular perception and sensitivity.
Sub-criterion of causal source or of causal animation: Causal animation refers to animated illu-
sions of motion whose arrangement of images is generated by chance series of images or by a
systemic conversion of causal processes into a series of graphic positions. This sub-criterion spans
analogue and digital media, like some modes of strata cut animation or the programmed conversion
of registers into visuals (see section ‘Automatically generated moving images and the programmer
as animator’ and Note on index).
These two sub-criteria describe and differentiate animation from its source and can span all
animation techniques, analogue and digital. They are useful to account for automatically (mostly
digitally) generated illusions of movement that fulfill the First Criterion and to distinguish their
movement’s different sources. Because of the multiplicity of sources, these sub-criteria can simul-
taneously apply to the same moving image: for instance, digital interactive works whose illusory
movement may be determined (partly or wholly) by programmers, programs, data inputs, and
users’ actions (see section ‘The programmer as animator and aspects of agential animation’). In
this regard, these criteria can assist in identifying and describing a moving image source, which
helps in defining it as animated or reconstituted real-time movement. The only difficulty of these

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Martinez 47

sub-criteria applications arises when distinguishing between an agent’s and a causal process’s
determination of the illusion of motion. It should be noted that such difficulty refers to that illu-
sion’s production and not to the perceptual difficulty experienced on the level of display (see sec-
tions ‘Digital moving images and their definition as animated or reconstituted illusions of motion’
and ‘Automatically generated moving images and the programmer as animator’).

Second Criterion: Criterion of non-reconstitution of movement or negative criterion

Animation’s illusion of motion has no indexical correspondence with a real-time movement rate of
change. Animation’s illusion does not replicate a real-time movement and has no indexical conti-
guity with it.
As its name suggests, this criterion defines animation by the absence of a characteristic, namely
the correspondence of the illusory motion with a real-time movement. While it appears similar to
the definition of ‘animation is the non-recorded illusion of motion’, this criterion emphasizes
movement and isolates it from the capture of the image. This criterion can apply to non-optical
motion capture methods that register movement and use it to ‘move’ artificial visuals (see section
‘Digital moving images derived from records of real-time movement’).
By pointing out how animation does not replicate movement, this criterion emphasizes anima-
tion’s production of its illusion. Like the Sub-criteria of non-contiguity and causal animation, the
Second Criterion relies on the concept of indexical contiguity. Indexical contiguity is here under-
stood in terms of Charles Sanders Peirce’s semiotics, hence the following note.

Note on the index as defined by Charles Sanders Peirce.  In Peirce’s semiotics, ‘A sign, or representa-
men, is something which stands to somebody for something in some respect or capacity’, and one
way to order signs is ‘according to the relation of the sign to its object’ (Peirce, 1955: 99, 101).
Thus,

An Icon is a sign which refers to the Object that it denotes merely by virtue of characters of its own, and
which it possesses … whether such Objects actually exist or not … An Index is a sign which refers to the
object it denotes by virtue of being really affected by that object … A Symbol is a sign which refers to the
Object that it denotes by virtue of a law … which operates to cause the Symbol to be interpreted as
referring to that Object. (p. 102)

Peirce highlights that the index requires the existence of its object:

An index is a sign which would, at once, lose the character which makes it a sign if its object were
removed, but would not lose that character if there were no interpretant. Such, for instance, is a piece of
mould with a bullet hole in it as a sign of a shot; for without the shot there would have been no hole; but
there is a hole there, whether anybody has the sense to attribute it to a shot or not. (p. 104)

However, this also means that for the index to signify, it needs an interpreter that detects the conti-
guity between the index and its referent (i.e. their correlated presence): ‘Psychologically, the action
of indices depends upon association by contiguity’ (p. 108).
Additionally, Peirce considers that indexical contiguity can employ signs that are not indices
themselves. Theorist Albert Atkin refers to this indirect mode of indexicality as the precept index
(Atkin, 2005: 161–188; Peirce, 1955: 110–111). Such a precept index would not signify without
retaining physical contiguity with its referent, that is, without that referent’s existence. Peirce
explains the precept index as follows:

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48 animation: an interdisciplinary journal 10(1)

Some indices are more or less detailed directions for what the hearer is to do in order to place himself in
direct experiential or other connection with the thing meant. Thus, the Coast Survey issues ‘notices to
Mariners,’ giving the latitude and longitude … and saying there is a rock … Although there will be other
elements in such directions, yet in the main they are indices. (p. 110; emphasis in the original)

The concept of the precept index and its mode of signification is useful for analyzing digital mov-
ing images where there is a supposed loss of indexicality, because the concept of the precept index
can describe the manner in which a digital moving image or its source may or may not reconstitute
a real-time movement, optically captured or not, or the rate of change of other processes. Hence,
this concept allows a distinction between animations and recorded moving images in the digital
medium.

Digital moving images and their definition as animated or

reconstituted illusions of motion
One of the key differences between animation and cinema has been the latter’s photographic ana-
logue, which has been considered cinema’s main indexical trait. Indeed, Peirce (1955: 106) includes
photographs as indices due to their analogue characteristic, ‘because they were physically forced
to correspond point by point to nature’. Theorists like Andre Bazin, Siegfried Kracauer, and Maya
Deren have stressed photographic indexicality in their realist accounts of film (Bazin, 2009;
Kracauer, 2004[1960]; Deren, 2004[1960]).
Consequently, arguments dismissing indexicality from digital moving images often focus on the
omission of the photographic analogue and the digital manipulation of the image (Manovich, 1995:
240; Prince, 1996: 28, 34, Russett, 2009: 19). Nonetheless, such claims are valid in as much as the
original photographic (i.e. optical) analogue is altered or omitted in the final digital image.
Concerning digital moving images, this claim refers to the visual aspect and not necessarily to the
movement.
The index of cinema is not only a photographic one but also, if not primarily, an index of move-
ment. As has been mentioned, the illusory reconstitution of a real-time movement retains contigu-
ity with its intervallic recording – it retains indexical contiguity with such movement. Cinema’s
intervallic recording, Lev Manovich (2000) notes, is similar to the sampling of digitization, the
process that turns analogue records into digital images or registers them directly from real sources.
Manovich describes digitization as follows:

Digitization consists of two steps: sampling and quantization. First, data is sampled, most often at regular
intervals, such as the grid of pixels used to represent a digital image. The frequency of sampling is referred
to as resolution. Sampling turns continuous data into discrete data, that is, data occurring in distinct units
… Second, each sample is quantified, that is, it is assigned a numerical value drawn from a defined range
(such as 0–255 in the case of an 8-bit greyscale image). (p. 28)

But while digital sampling shares the discontinuity of cinema’s visual intervallic capture (see Sub-
criterion of non-continuity), Manovich also notes that because of their quantization and coding,
digital samples can be programmed (p. 51). From this programmable character derive most of the
difficulties of defining digital illusions of motion.
Theorist David Clark identifies several of the difficulties digital media pose to previous defini-
tions of animated and recorded moving images. An initial difficulty is the dissociation between a
recorded moving image and its real-time movement, since in digital media,

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Martinez 49

A frame and a moment are no longer held together by the medium the way they were in film. They have
been divided and reorganized. A frame of film is now a complex array of possible components each with
a number of possible sources and controls. (Clark, 2005: 143)

For Clark, the informational character of the digital image allows it to be indefinitely manipulated
and dissociated from a determinate arrangement; he refers to this dissociation as the loss of the
index of time (pp. 142–143). Clark also points to the constructed character of animation’s artificial
time (the trait covered by the Sub-criterion of non-contiguous time) and contrasts it with the
recorded time of non-digital cinema; he then explains how the dissociation between image and
arrangement would turn all moving images into animation and animation itself into just a type of
moving image association:

In digital media, the progression of the image is not limited to the run/stop algorithm of the film projector
but can now engage in the complex if/then logic of the computer code. With this code the physics of
movement can be written and distributed separately from the image itself. The code can generate the image
and the image can generate the code. Just as live-action film can now be seen as a subset of animation, so
too can animation be seen now as one particular simple example of this image/code hybrid. (pp. 143, 144)

Moreover, because digital moving images can be generated from any data, Clark also suggests that
animation can generate in real-time and from registers of real-time movement; for instance, with a
users’ movement in a graphic user interface, ‘animation is no longer an index of a determined
motion but a record of our hand moving across the piece’ (p. 147).
Additionally, Clark notes that digital moving images can generate automatically from computer
programs, what Clark deems ‘generative animation’, and suggests that in those instances the com-
puter program is the animator (pp. 146–148). Clark explains that in programs like Puppet Tool
(2005) and Soda Play (2000), ‘the viewer is brought into the animation process as the creator of the
objects but it is the virtual world – the frame around the object – that animates them’ (p. 146).
The problems Clark alludes to can be summarized as follows: the dissociation of a recorded
photographic analogue from its real-time movement, as a supposed loss of indexicality; moving
images derived from records of real-time movement, often with artificial graphics and often real-
time visualizations of such movement; and automatically generated moving images, without a
human animator directly determining the graphic positions that result in illusory motion. In the
subsequent sections, each of these points will be analyzed with the help of the proposed criteria,
the concept of intervallic illusion of motion, and that of the precept index so as to distinguish
between animations and records of movement.

Dissociation of the record of an image from its real-time movement

As mentioned previously, animation differs from recorded cinema in that its illusion is not contigu-
ous to a real-time movement. This dissociation between animation’s time of display and that of its
actual production has been considered a trait exclusive of animation (see Sub-criterion of non-
contiguous time); nonetheless, Clark (2005) argues that this non-contiguity applies to all digital
moving images because of the dissociation between their image and a determinate arrangement,
which would turn all digital moving images into animation (pp. 143, 144).
However, indexical contiguity with a real-time movement remains if correspondence between
illusory movement and recorded movement remains. It remains if the arrangement that produces
the illusion of motion is still determined by a real-time movement, that is if the graphic positions of
the illusion of motion derive from the rate of positions of their real-time movement source. In that

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50 animation: an interdisciplinary journal 10(1)

case, the illusion of motion is not produced but reproduced from a real-time movement, which
according to the Second Criterion is not animation.
Hence, for the most part, digitized visual recordings of real-time movement are not dissociated
from their arrangement and remain optical indices, though dissociation might be an option. Their
images’ sampling, although digital, reproduces an actual optical reality and results from it – a digi-
tized photographic image retains contiguity with its subject, it is a visual index of it. In this regard,
Clark’s point is valid to the extent that the arrangement of images corresponding to a real-time
movement is lost, but this is only a possibility of digital manipulation and the default situation of
digitized video is to retain its arrangement.

Digital moving images derived from records of real-time movement

What about moving images that rely on records of real-time movement, especially those with
artificial images? In this case the illusion of motion may lack an image that is a visual index of
its moving object, but there are other methods to record and reconstitute real-time movement
besides intervallic photographs – that is, real-time movement can be reconstituted without an
analogue visual.
One of these methods is motion capture. Motion capture is a type of reconstitution of movement
with precedents in non-digital media, notably Étienne-Jules Marey’s experiments of intervallic
capture of movements (Menache, 2000: 32). Motion capture’s technical process ‘involves measur-
ing an object’s position and orientation in physical space, then recording that information in a
computer-usable form’ (Dyer et al., 1995). This measurement of positions can be optical or non-
optical (Menache, 2000); examples of non-optical processes include mechanical armatures and
inertial systems, like the sensors used by smartphones to orient the screen in the desired horizontal
or vertical frame. While the record of positions may be applied to artificial images, the resulting
illusory movement corresponds to the intervallic registers of real-time movement and thus recon-
stitutes such movement. In other words, according to the Second Criterion, it is not animation. If,
as often happens, the resulting motion captured moving images are edited by animators, the mov-
ing image would be a reconstitution of movement in that illusory motion not affected by the anima-
tors (the distinction here would be partial and case specific).
Another instance of motion capture are graphic user interfaces that rely on registering (often not
optically) a user’s movements and depicting this movement with the positions of graphic elements
on a screen; examples include the use of a mouse device and touch screens that record a fingertip.
In these and other cases of motion capture, the set of computer codes constitute a precept index
because they are instructions that direct to a real position and convert it into a visual sign.
To briefly recall the concept, a precept index is a sign that keeps indexical contiguity with a
referent by employing signs that are not indices themselves. Nonetheless, as the example suggests,
the necessary physical correlation with the referent object has to remain if the precept is to signify
the object’s position and/or movement. Thus, the code and its resulting illusion of motion are pre-
cept indices; this is because they substitute the direct index (the physical and intervallic register of
sensors) for a set of instructions that replicate the recorded positions or any other index registers;
the coded instructions for illusory movement retain contiguity with a real-time movement source.
Additionally, accounting for indexical contiguity through digital information allows identifica-
tion of the concrete source of this information (e.g. a real-time movement) and of the real inter-
preter of this information. This last point is important because while the resulting visualization of
this index may hide the source of its information (the data from which it is interpreted/displayed)
to the perception of the viewer or user, this information source is available – has to be – to the
producer of such imagery. By identifying the interpreter of such information, it is possible to

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Martinez 51

discern who or what produces digital moving images whose source is not a real-time movement.
In other words, accounting for the interpreter helps to determine if the maker is a program or a
programmer, if the animation is causal or agential. If so, to what extent are the system’s results
determined by the programmer, by the program, by the input of users, or by other sources of input?
The first step in answering this question – the question of the authorship of digital moving
images – is to detect the source of their arrangement. While this source can be indexical, its index
need not be one of a real-time movement, in which case it would be deemed animation under the
First Criterion. Moreover, indices can be deliberately used to render an illusion of motion, as for
instance in digital media visualizations of real-time processes. To explain this situation, it is neces-
sary to review what indexical and causal animation consist of, and so the following note begins the
next section.

Automatically generated moving images and the programmer as animator

Note on index-based animation and causal animation.  To recapitulate, causal animation can be under-
stood as the illusion of movement generated from causal processes rather than from an animator’s
deliberate determination of the graphic positions that produce illusory movement. In causal anima-
tion the arrangements of images (and often the images themselves) derive from the rate of change
of causal processes; whether from a chance series of images, like some instances of strata cut ani-
mation,4 or from the systemic conversion of causal registers, like a program’s automatic generation
of moving images from index registers. As long as these visuals do not correspond to a real-time
index of changes in position – that is, do not reconstitute a real-time movement – their illusion of
motion can be considered animation. Moreover, as mentioned, causal animation is not limited to
the digital, nor is all animation that employs index registers causal.
Cases of non-digital causal animation can be found in accidental stop motion, such as the fur
movement of the original King Kong (Cooper, 1933; Pellerin, 2005); another case is the accidental
animation of film stock scratches and stains that constitute an accidental type of direct animation.5
Both examples can be deemed accidental causal animations because their arrangement of images
and, thus, their illusion of motion results from unplanned causality. Nevertheless, causal animation
may be produced non-accidentally by the deliberate capture of an indexical arrangement of images.
The resulting moving images are not accidental because their recording is the deliberate act of an
agent, but they remain causal because the arrangement of the series of images is determined in a
causal manner. In such case, the arrangement and/or the images themselves remain indices, and as
indices they can be recorded directly or integrated into more complex systems (like computer
programs).
Some instances of strata cut animation exemplify this deliberate but still causal animation; for
instance, in cases where the series of images are produced by cutting through the length of a mate-
rial without the material being prepared in advance. The resulting arrangement of images is arbi-
trary – its images are indices of the cut and the image’s arrangement is an index of the material’s
length. But, while strata cut images are indexical, the animation is causal only when the arbitrary
character of the material results in the images’ arrangement. Some examples include some of Oskar
Fischinger’s wax animations (Furniss, 2007: 54) and the Visible Human Project’s (1933) animated
depiction of slices of frozen human bodies (see US National Library of Medicine, 2003).
Other strata cut animations cannot be considered causal but rather agential because the material
to be sliced is prepared so as to control the sequence of images and hence the illusion of motion.
Some examples are works by David Daniels such as Tribal Color (1990) (Daniels, 2014). However,
in causal strata cut, the agent’s role is limited to procuring the conditions for those images and
capturing them. The agent can have a similar role in digital media.

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52 animation: an interdisciplinary journal 10(1)

Digital moving images can be considered causal animations when the arrangement of their
sequence of images is the result of causality, even if this causality is automatic and systemic. Also,
while the moving images’ causal arrangement can derive from index registers, it can also generate
from the execution of a computer code without indexical input.
Examples of digital animation derived from index causalities are functional information visuali-
zations, which would be animation as long as their indices do not reconstitute a real-time move-
ment (see Second Criterion below). An example is the NICT Daedalus Cyber-Attack Alert System’s
interface that animates suspicious internet activity (Vande Moere, 2012). In such cases the anima-
tion is automated; nonetheless, an agent creates the system that employs and displays information
in a manner of cause and effect (the ‘if/then logic of the computer code’ mentioned by Clark, 2005:
143). It should be noted that this is in regard to systems not created by systems. It is here that the
question of authorship emerges again; its answer can define animation in cases where the automa-
tion and the use of indices (other than those of real-time movement) seemingly dissolve the differ-
ence with reconstitutions of real-time movement.

The programmer as animator and aspects of agential animation.  While a digital system can generate
its illusion of motion automatically and, often, from causal registers, the system is programmed by
an agent, the programmer. Because in digital media the agent can determine in advance the rules of
the system, she or he can control the possible arrangement of graphic and virtual positions that
result in the illusion of motion. In this sense, the programmer animates or, conversely, the animator
programs. This last point makes the difference of who animates less contentious because the pro-
grammer’s actions can be examined to see the extent by which she or he determines the possible
illusory movement. Some new media artworks provide examples of this situation. As artworks, the
final moving image of the system refers in some respect to the artistic expression deliberately set
by the human agent, the artist, the animator.
A first instance are new media artworks that are digital indexical animations, where the result is
partly determined by the author and partly by the data inputted to the system he or she builds. John
Klima’s (2000) ecosystem exemplifies this: ecosystem animates virtual flocks in real-time in
response to streams of financial and weather data and according to rules programmed by Klima
(see Russett, 2009: 120–121). But while the inputted information is external, Klima places author-
ship with him; for him his work engages the audience in a more dynamic experience, but he, as the
author of the virtual system, delimits the final result (including the illusory movement) (p. 119).
A second instance are systems where the illusory movement is solely derived from programmed
rules. Karl Sims’s procedural animations exemplify this. He defines procedural animation as ‘when
a computer program determines the details of objects or motions instead of having them generated
interactively by a person’. Sims employed this method in his works Particle Dreams (1988) and
Panspermia (1990), for the behavior rules of particles and self-propagating systems (see Russett,
2009: 70). Because of this process, Sims concludes something similar to Clark in regard to the
authorship of the automatic illusions of motion (Clark, 2005: 147–148) and suggests that because
the work is done in tandem with the computer, ‘maybe the “process” is the artist’. Nonetheless,
Sims also considers himself a ‘meta-level creator who makes something – a self-propagating sys-
tem which in turn actually makes the imagery’. Both Klima and Sims are makers of virtual systems
that automatically animate – that is, they are authors of digital causal animation systems that pro-
duce a set of subsequent graphic positions (First Criterion). The illusions of motion are agential to
the extent that the artists’ agency pre-determines the parameters by which these systems simulate
changing virtual positions – that is, their systems are simulations of movement. In both cases, the
artists are what Gonzalo Frasca (2003: 227) deems ‘simiauthors’.

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Martinez 53

Frasca explains that ‘to simulate is to model a (source) system through a different system which
maintains (for somebody) some of the behaviors of the original system’ (p. 223); he also mentions
how simiauthors model the rules of behavior that govern a given simulation model (p. 229).
Through these rules, simiauthors determine the range of possibilities of that model in response to
different information sources, which could be information streams or user interaction (p. 233);
moreover, Frasca argues that whoever or whatever inputs information to the system the authorship
remains with the simiauthor. Simiauthors are animators when they set the rules that simulate move-
ment, when they animate via these rules.
Nonetheless, while authorship of the system can largely or absolutely determine the system’s
final result (e.g. an illusion of motion), this is inasmuch as this result conforms to those authorial
possibilities set at the onset of the system by the programmer. Which is to say that if the system is
modified by its users – who then become co-authors – or, more intriguing, if the system evolves on
its own possibilities (e.g. artificial intelligence) the author would only partially determine the final
results. In such instances, the question of who or what animates can only be answered partially and
by sorting different sources, because the programmer would be responsible only for a certain
amount of the animation, or better put, for certain aspects of its production.
Thus, programmers operate as animators in the measure that they determine the possible illu-
sory movement, and the manner in which they do so is through the computer code. This last con-
tinues what McLaren described as the ‘manipulation of the differences between successive frames’
constituting the animator’s operation (in Sifianos, 1995: 66), and by identifying this operation one
can discern between animated and recorded moving images, between the programmers’ action and
that of the system or its users, and between programs that generate virtual positions and those that
replicate the positions of a recorded real-time movement.
In addition to programmers’ simulation of virtual movement, programmers can directly deter-
mine an illusion of motion via the limited execution of the computer code. This is, the programmer
provides a closed system with the code and the information the system uses. A good example are
cases where the programmer determines the illusory movement solely by programming and with-
out crafting the visuals, in effect bypassing the ‘graphism’ of the frame (see Introduction; McLaren,
in Sifianos, 1995: 66). Many of the animations of Larry Cuba exemplify this situation because of
his exclusive reliance on the computer code; he describes part of his creative process as follows:

I don’t have an image of the final film or even any of the scenes before I start programming. I only have
basic structural ideas that come from algebra, or from the nature of the [computer] drawing process, or
from the hierarchical structure of the items in the scene and how they will dance – the choreographic
movements from a mathematical point of view … Because if you start with these mathematical structures
you can discover imagery that you have not previsualized but have ‘found’ within the dimensions of the
search space. (Cuba in Youngblood, 1986)

Cuba animates in this manner not merely to depict isolated patterns of movement but ‘to know
what it is about the pattern that evokes that feeling. And what’s the relation between that pattern
and its mathematical description?’ Cuba’s approach was inspired by Norman McLaren’s Pas de
Deux’s (1968) emphasis in the mathematical structure of movement, particularly in regard to the
mathematical arrangement of positions in space (Turner, 2003: 18).

Iconicity of agential animation

Cuba’s appropriation of a particular movement’s structure is paramount to the creation of that
movement’s icon, that is, animation as an icon of movement. As mentioned, an icon, in Peirce’s
(1955: 104, 105) terms, is a sign that represents its object by sharing a quality with it. Animation

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54 animation: an interdisciplinary journal 10(1)

as an icon of movement would in turn be a twice abstracted icon; first, as a discretional selection
of imagined positions; second, as the isolation of a quality or aspect of such positions. Moreover,
the resulting animation not only shares the quality of the imagined movement but also that of the
animator’s particular way of envisioning it – in this sense, the animation becomes iconic of the
animator’s particular sensitivity as it shares the animator’s imagining of movement and her or his
particular aesthetic; agential animation also becomes an index of the agent’s particular sensitivity,
and this iconic and indexical quality is in itself a characteristic of most agential animation.
Thus, as animation whose graphic or virtual positions are deliberately determined by a person,
within the bounds of the necessary arrangement of images (Schaffer, 2006: 464) and the technical
bounds of the different media, agential animation materializes – becomes a trace of – the anima-
tor’s conception of movement, animates such vision, and animates aspects of the state of mind that
conceived it and created it.
In this way, reconstituted illusions of motion contrast with agential animations because these
last originate as movement imagined by an animator. Theorist Maya Deren offers a parallel con-
trast between cinema’s photographic image and the crafted pictorial image,

But the term ‘image’ also has positive implications: it presumes a mental activity, whether in its most
passive form … or as in the arts, the creative action of the imagination realized by the art instrument …
Photography, however, is a process by which an object creates its own image by the action of its light or
light-sensitive material. It thus presents a closed circuit precisely at the point where, in the traditional art
forms, the creative process takes place as reality passes through the artist. (Deren, 2004[1960]: 189–190)

Where cinema and other moving images replicate a real-time movement, animators create its
illusion; the manner in which they do so varies greatly but always operates by determining the pos-
sibilities of the illusion of movement, which at present, as magic lanterns long ago, is performed
through the arrangement of graphic positions and their intervallic display that results in illusory
motion.

Conclusions
This article has offered a set of criteria with which to distinguish animation as a particular type of
moving image, with a special focus on distinction in the digital medium. These criteria are drawn
from what is here considered animation’s ontological trait: produced solely illusory movement.
This trait’s presence in the production of a moving image is used as a positive criterion of defini-
tion, and it refers to specific conditions of production and display of the animated moving image.
Reviewing these conditions shows that some are shared with all moving images, such as the
discontinuity–discretional character of the intervallic illusion of movement; some are exclusive to
animation, such as artificiality of its arrangement of intervallic images; and some are absent from
it, such as the contiguous correlation of illusory movement with a real-time movement.
This last trait, the replication of a recorded real-time movement, has been the most popular
criterion with which to define animation as, ‘the illusion of motion that is not recorded’, as what is
not; but, as a criterion, it is not sufficient to describe animation and its usage becomes problematic
in digital media due to the dissociation of digitized moving images from the arrangement of their
recording and the manipulation to which these images are subjected. I sustain that as a criterion it
remains valid to distinguish that which is reconstituted movement; that is, to distinguish replicated
movement as not animation, instead of its inverse use of what animation is.
To achieve this requires a review of what recorded moving images are and their constitutive
aspects, namely the intervallic illusion of motion, the intervallic reconstitution of real-time

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Martinez 55

movement, and indexical contiguity; this is to show how, even in digital media, illusions of motion
can reconstitute movement and how indexical contiguity with a real-time movement remains. A
review of indexical contiguity also shows that it can apply to animation in analogue and digital
media in aspects other than real-time movement, and often as part of the automatic generation of
illusory motion through programmed systems.
What many cases of programmed animation show is that criteria, and defining, are sometimes
accurate by partial and differentiated application. For instance, while a moving image can be deter-
mined as animated or reconstituted, the question of its authorship as an animator’s creation or a
system of causality can only be answered in the degree to which the animator, the system, and other
factors determine the final moving image. This partial categorization is not new, for motion pic-
tures often mix different types of moving images and a work that mixes both cannot be deemed to
be entirely animation or reconstituted real-time movement. An accurate description of such work
would require examining each of its components. Hence, this article’s framework limitation to
ontological aspects of moving images.
Finally, the concept of animation is broader than its use as an illusory moving image. It refers
not only to the illusion of motion but also to artificial life, and fields from animatronics to arti-
ficial intelligence have used the term. In animation studies some theorists have taken this
approach; for instance, Alan Cholodenko (1991: 16) notes that ‘even when we are in the familiar
terrain of animation as “endowing with life” … we will find animation as “endowing with
motion” engaged in some form or manner.’ Such has not been this article’s approach; rather the
proposed criteria focus on providing an accurate description of the ontological conditions of the
animated moving image.

Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-
profit sectors.

Notes
1. The choice of the term ‘real-time movement’ and not simply ‘movement’ addresses the fact that anima-
tion can be produced from records of movement, as long as the resulting illusion does not reproduce the
movement’s real-time rate of change of positions but rather generates a new rate of positions (see First
Criterion; for examples, see section ‘Digital moving images and their definition as animated or reconsti-
tuted illusions of motion’, Note on index-based animation). Moreover, the term ‘real-time’ specifies the
relationship between time and movement of recorded moving images (see section ‘Criteria for defining
animation’, Note on intervallic illusion).
2. While the terms ‘generative’ and ‘procedural’ may not be entirely interchangeable, both refer to moving
images produced by a computer system from programmed information. Animator Karl Sims uses the
term ‘procedural’ (see Russett, 2009: 70); while theorist David Clark uses ‘generative’ (Clark, 2005:
147) (see sections ‘Digital moving images and their definition as animated or reconstituted illusions of
motion’ and ‘Automatically generated moving images and the programmer as animator’).
3. This understanding of continuity derives from Gilles Deleuze’s (1986) account of Henri Bergson’s
notion of a movement’s wholeness. He recounts Bergson’s first thesis of movement as ‘movement is
distinct from the space covered … The space covered is divisible … whilst movement is indivisible, or
cannot be divided without changing qualitatively each time it is divided’ (pp. 5, 6).
4. Strata cut here refers to the techniques of producing a series of images by slicing through a material and
registering the image of each slice.
5. Direct animation here refers to the method of directly drawing (scratching) onto film stock. In some
direct animation modes, a line or other image is drawn across the length of a strip of film and bypasses
each frame’s frontier.

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56 animation: an interdisciplinary journal 10(1)

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Author biography
Omar O Linares Martinez graduated with a Critical and Cultural Practice major from Emily Carr University
of Art and Design, Vancouver, in 2014. He is currently studying the relation between the formal qualities of
animation and its types of content. Some of his other interests include drawing and cultural journalism.

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