School staff
Professor Paul Wells is Director of the Animation Academy, a research group dedicated to cutting edge engagement with Animation and related moving image practices. Paul is an internationally established scholar, screenwriter and director, having published widely in Animation and Film Studies, and written and directed numerous projects for theatre, radio, television and film.
His books include Understanding Animation (London: Routledge), Animation and America (Rutgers University Press), The Fundamentals of Animation (Lausanne: AVA),and The Animated Bestiary: Animals, Cartoons and Culture (Rutgers University Press), now all standard texts in the study, practice and research of animation as a field. His work also embraces collaborative texts, including Drawing for Animation (Lausanne: AVA) with master animator, Joanna Quinn, and Re-Imagining Animation (Lausanne: AVA) with Johnny Hardstaff, leading graphic designer and film-maker with Ridley Scott Associates.
Paul’s text, Scriptwriting (Lausanne: AVA), forms the basis of workshops and consultancies he has conducted worldwide. His continuing professional engagements, include working with writers from The Simpsons and Spongebob Squarepants, and developing animated shorts, children’s series, documentaries and features in Norway, Sweden, Belgium, The Netherlands, and the United States.
Spinechillers, Paul’s radio history of the horror film won a Sony Award, while Britannia – The Film was chosen as an Open University set text. His recent TV documentaries on John Coates, Geoff Dunbar, and John Halas – the latter based on his book, Halas & Batchelor Cartoons – An Animated History (London: Southbank Publishing) with Vivien Halas – have been presented at festivals globally. He was also a consultant for the BBC’s Animation Nation.
Paul is Chair of the Association of British Animation Collections (ABAC), a collaborative initiative with the BFI, BAFTA and the National Media Museum.
Teaching
SAB 448 Animation: Context, Theory and Practice
SAP 004 Exploring Materials, Processes and Techniques
SAA 124 Critical Practice in Fine Art
PhD Supervision [Animation, Film, TV. Scriptwriting, Comedy, Sport and the Media]
MA Project Supervision [Various]
Research
Paul is interested in developing theories of practice, and practices of theory. He has recently completed an annotated bibliography for animation theory and practice for Oxford University Press, and is the editor of a new journal, Animation Practice, Process and Production (Bristol: Intellect) that seeks to present different aspects of research-led practice and production processes. As well as encouraging research in animation, Paul is increasingly involved in developing work on screenwriting and archival practices. He is currently writing a book about global animation archives with Mette Peters from the Netherlands Institute for Animation Film; another on Character Animation (London: Laurence King) with colleague, Andrew Selby, and a monograph on Animation, Sport and Culture.
Postgraduate Research Supervision
Paul currently supervises a range of PhD studies including work on animation and interior states, animation and activism, animated public information films, the relationship between live action and animation, animation screenwriting and cultural specificity, sound and animation, animation and social identity, and animation as a distinctive form of expression.
Paul’s current supervisions include:
Kerry Drumm, Fabia Lin, Manki Park, Tariq Alrimawi, Samantha Moore, Seymour Lavine, Sarra Hornby and Ho-Won Nah.
Featured Publications - Recent Essays
‘Boards, Beats, Binaries and Bricolage : Approaches to the Animated Script in J.Nelmes (ed) Analysing the Screenplay, London & New York : Routledge, 2010, pp 89-105.
‘From Melbourne-Cooper to Match of the Day and Mo-Cap : Motion as Metaphor and Metaphysics in Animated Sport’ in M.O’Mahony & M.Huggins (eds) The International Journal of the History of Sport, Vol 28, Nos 8-9, June 2011 pp 1219-1234.
‘Picture by Picture, Movement by Movement: Melbourne-Cooper, Shiryaev and the Symbolic Body’ in P.Gauthier (ed), Animation : An Interdisciplinary Journal, June 2011 pp 1-14
‘The Toolbox of Technology and Technique : Animation in 100 Objects’ in G.Hilty and A.Pardo (eds) Watch Me Move : The Animation Show, London & New York : Merrill, June 2011, pp 18-
‘The Chaplin Effect: Ghosts in the Machine and Animated Gags’ in D.Goldmark & C.Keil (eds) Funny Pictures; Animation and Comedy in Studio-Era Hollywood, Berkeley, Los Angeles & London: University of California Press, 2011, pp 15-28.
Links
http://lboro.academia.edu/PaulWells
http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=29917662&locale=en_US&trk=tyah
