A Design Perspective on Animated Puppets’ Materiality. How Design can Provide New Interpretation Tools in the Analysis of Animated Puppet Films

Animation is an interdisciplinary art field as its production processes can be implemented by many disciplines and it can be analysed from several perspectives. In this fascinating field, several tools of interpretation based on examining moving images from philosophical, social, psychological and aesthetic perspectives have been developed. The paper suggests applying tools of analysis provided by the field of design and considers puppets‟ material features as another vehicle of significances in the interpretation of stop-motion animated films. The recognition of the evocativeness of the material qualities of puppets‟ surfaces is not new in the analysis of puppet films, and several scholars have interpreted animated puppets‟ materiality as a meaningful element in the narrative. These studies demonstrate stop-motion animation to be a powerful expressive material medium, and I suggest recognising the design‟s toolkit suited for its analysis. Over the last decade, design scholars have studied materials as vehicles of emotions in the user-product interaction and, according to them, those visceral reactions stem from both personal experiences of material and collective values according to the historical dimension evoked by its use: human beings‟ everyday experience with the surrounding world is mediated by material surfaces of things, and each culture shares common imageries about materials. Stemming from these premises, the paper aims to find new interpretations of stop-motion films, based on the material analysis of their protagonists: the puppets. To support my reasoning I will discuss Adam Elliot‟s clay-biographical films. Elliot fabricates „wonky‟ un-proportioned clay puppets with imprecise lines and imperfect finishes, and this formal imperfection is both a physical feature and the main power of the material used. Shape uniqueness, superficial imperfection and passing time, indeed, are both material features and keys of interpretation in Elliot‟s films.