International grad student chooses SFU to explore magic of puppet animation
Here's a great SFU news story about visting PhD candidiate Hongyan Sun, who's working with the SCA's Laura U. Marks for her work on puppet animation. Read on...
The great Czech animator Jan Svankmajer calls puppet animation “a fantasy world built of real things.”
He’s right: there is something special about puppet animation that even the slickest, most expensive computer-generated imagery still can’t capture.
Puppet animation uses the technique of stop-motion to animate the movement of articulated, highly poseable doll-like puppets. The puppets are staged and moved on sets that are scaled-down, often elaborate, and cinematically lit and filmed.
Made of actual physical materials, every puppet has its own movement and rhythm—almost a sense of independent self. Yet no matter how sophisticated the work, puppet animation feels tangible and somehow familiar, remaining as modest as it is magical.
Hongyan Sun, a PhD candidate at the Communication University of China, is an emerging expert on puppet animation. She received a scholarship from the China Scholarship Council to spend a year at SFU studying under professor Laura Marks in the School for the Contemporary Arts.
She was attracted to SFU, she says, because of Marks’ research into the haptic aesthetics (touch and tactility) of moving-image and film theory.
“I believe haptic aesthetics can be combined with animation to produce something new,” says Sun, who has taken three courses so far—moving-image research methods, media art theory, and how to write an academic paper in English.
As part of her work at SFU, she curated a free, one-night screening of puppet animation films that aired on April 25. Her film selections drew from six different countries and eras, each with a markedly different style.
She says the most important aspect of her SFU experience, however, has been her discussions and research with Marks, whose theories have inspired Sun’s dissertation work.
“Professor Laura Marks impacts me a lot,” says Sun. “She is a profound knowledge scholar, always ready to help me out.”
Sun, who describes herself as a typical, contemporary Chinese graduate student, says, “In the field of humanities and art study, I deeply feel that the research systems and research interests of English-speaking countries are different from those of China. Studying at SFU has opened up a brand-new channel for me to touch and explore more possibilities and see the diversity of the world.”