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This chapter chronicles the rise of John Lasseter's career and the groundbreaking animated films he directed, revealing ways he and his colleagues at Pixar changed the direction of commercial animation forever. Lasseter is the much-celebrated chief creative officer for Pixar Animation Studios, Walt Disney Animation Studios, and Disneytoon Studios. He is also one of the best known and most successful animators in the world. He has contributed to the revival of character animation and helped propel a return to feature-length animation in Hollywood and beyond. Moreover, Lasseter may have done more to foster thinking, embodied computer-generated characters than anyone else. The chapter details the creation of films such as Toy Story (1995), A Bug's Life (1998), and Cars (2006).

This chapter examines fluttering leaves, swirling dust, and rippling waves as one of cinema’s earliest and most significant forms of motion. While most theorists maintain that such phenomena attracted early spectators because their unplanned appearance flaunted the indexical realism of cinema’s indiscriminate recording, this chapter shows how this attraction is part of a broader visual appeal of “contingent motion” that precedes the cinematic image and persists in the age of digital animation. Specifically, the chapter juxtaposes phenomenological insights about such phenomena in Kant’s Critique of Judgment, early spectators’ reactions to such phenomena in “wave films,” and contemporary spectators’ reactions to synthetic versions of such phenomena in computer-generated cartoons like Frozen (2013). In revealing a phenomenological consistency across these three different ways of encountering such phenomena, the chapter shows how early spectators’ astonishment at fluttering leaves and rippling waves cannot be explained with theories of the photographic index. Instead, this chapter argues, the visual reproduction of contingent motion involves its own logics of visual pleasure distinct from the marvels of the photographic process.

The interaction between facial motion and facial form is examined in this chapter. Several studies focusing on the relative contribution of facial motion and facial form, including one investigating how facial motion and facial form can be combined by the human face recognition system by using motion capture and computer animation techniques, are also discussed. These studies found that the identity judgments of observers about facial identity are biased by the non-rigid facial motion in the presence of cues to facial form, and do not explain if seeing faces in motion provides any accurate information about facial form. They support the integration of facial form and motion information as a combination of facial forms. Facial motion is used by observers when making judgments regarding facial resemblance.

This chapter explores the use of new voice technologies in film sound design and shows how the affordances of three-dimensional sound are fully used in computer animation, allowing voices to travel to space. In other films, 3D technology is used more moderately, and always narratively motivated—for instance, to signify “disorientation” or “unreality.” This is also true for voice processing technology. The chapter considers major innovations that have affected the voice, including changes to the mode of delivery, the development of more complex layering techniques, and the introduction of new ways of treating the voice. It furthermore discusses the quest for a perfect voice through digitization, the relationship between voice and body, and the digital voice in the “two-suitcase film.”

This chapter discusses factors influencing the event-related potential signal, N170, during the perception of dynamic faces, and compares the findings of studies in cognitive neuroscience that have used dynamic images of facial expressions with those which have used static expressions. The ecological validity of findings has been increased by using dynamic images of facial expressions and gaze. The chapter emphasizes that the perceived intensity of subsequent expressions can also be modulated by the brief dynamic expressions or micro expressions, a finding which establishes a direct relationship between perception and action in facial processing. It concludes that future developments in computer animations and virtual reality, and the use of dynamic stimuli, will play a crucial role in examining the dynamic nature of perception and the underlying brain functions.