If I might make an immodest suggestion, Television: Critical Methods and
Applications, 3rd edition (Erlbaum, 2007), provides such a nutshell.

http://tvcrit3.tvcrit.com/

Although this is a TV textbook, the animation chapter starts with 19th
century devices (e.g., the Phenakistoscope) and the cinema from the
1910s-20s (e.g., McCay), includes Pixar, and ends with contemporary video
game animation.  In the third edition, which came out last fall, animation
scholar Daniel Goldmark extended this chapter to deal with animation since
the 1980s.

The chapter might not be perfect for your situation as it includes some
critical discussion (e.g., naturalism versus abstraction) in addition to the
historical overview.  You can get some sense of its orientation by checking
out its illustrations, which are all online:

http://www.tcf.ua.edu/tvcritgallery/main.php/v/chapter11/

Hope that's some assistance.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Jason Mittell <[log in to unmask]>
To: Film and TV Studies Discussion List <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2007 06:41:33 -0400
Subject: History of animation in a nutshell?
Hi all ­ I¹m looking for a pedagogical tool & hoping the collective wisdom
of this crowd can help.

I¹m teaching an animation course this fall, and have decided to not
structure it as a chronological history for the first time, grounding it
more around topics, techniques, issues, specific auteurs, etc. But I¹m
thinking that I¹d like to start students with a nutshell overview of
animation history to provide a skeleton to hang everything else upon ­ I¹m
sure that any such overview will be significantly flawed in a range of ways,
but we can work in class to discover & discuss the flaws along the way.
Basically ³McCay to Pixar² in 50 pages or so (it¹s fine if it¹s
American-centric, as it is an American Studies course). I haven¹t seen any
such chronological walkthrough in any of the animation literature, so I was
thinking that there may be one published in a film history textbook (if it
breaks out by genre or treats animation apart from live-action) or a genre
handbook. Anybody know of such an essay that they could recommend?

Thanks in advance,
-Jason

--
Jason Mittell, Assistant Professor of American Studies and Film & Media
Culture
Middlebury College
204 Adirondack House
Middlebury, Vermont 05753
(802) 443-3435 / fax: (802) 443-5123
Homepage: http://seguecommunity.middlebury.edu/sites/jmittell
Blog: http://justtv.wordpress.com





-- 
Jeremy Butler

www.ScreenLex.org
www.ScreenSite.org
www.TVCrit.com
www.AllThingsAcoustic.org

Professor - TCF Dept. - U Alabama

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