Are Some Cycles Are More Lively Than Others? Animated Cycles Sustaining the Illusion of Life

Alan Cholodenko, (1991) defines the illusion of life as to endow with movement and endow with life. Can it be argued that animated cycles are the most sustaining of the illusion of life in animation? They don’t atrophy or change, they are infinite unless their apparatus ceases to function or we choose to stop their display. Animated cycles can be very compelling in the form of a satisfying social media gif or repetitively jarring when spotted within an animated film. Dan Torre, (2019) hails the animated cycle as one of the most significant structures within the animated form but in the past, animated cycles were often seen as an economic technique in TV and Film animation production (Noake, 1988). How can they be this compelling and repetitively jarring? Why do we watch when we know the outcome? Animated cycles appear deceptively simple to create, but their granularity is fascinating being made up of a finite, linear sequence of frames, but when repeated they are seamlessly circular in form and hark back to the proto-cinematic zoetrope. In taking up Lev Manovich’s (2001) provocation “to undertake systematic, laboratory-like research into its elements, and basic compositional, expressive and generative strategies” I analyse what Torre terms the ‘process document’ and examine the animated cycle, and ask why are some animated cycles more lively than others? Torre’s definition of four different structural archetypes of the animated cycle; Looping, Oscillating, Random and Stationary cycles informs this research alongside case study process documents and textual analysis.