ABSTRACT
In Russia, the artistic connection between animation and aviation was instituted in the imperial period and was more a celebration of technological modernity rather than state propaganda. Born in Moscow in 1882 into a family of Polish origins, Vladislav Starevich6 is known as the author of the first puppet-animated films that he created in the Khanzhonkov film studios in the 1910s.7 He fled Russia after the Bolshevik revolution and settled down in France, where he continued to make animated films until his death in 1965. In 1912 Starevich made an animated film titled Insects’ Aviation Week [Aviatsionnaia nedelia nasekomykh], which celebrated aviation week, held in Saint Petersburg in May 1911; the event resulted in the death of an aviator.8 Starevich used dead insects for his stop animation: by replacing the beetles’ legs with wire, attached with sealing wax to their thorax, he was able to create articulated insect puppets. Puppet animation and computer 3D animation are similar in that they produce a realistic effect of a 3D space through manipulation with a puppet, whether material or virtual, in a defined world. Starevich’s animation in the 1910s and 3D animation in the 2010s define the trajectory of Russian animation with particular interest in recreating space as a tangible ludic world and manipulation with perception through stop-motion and vector graphics, respectively. In both cases, aviation provides animators with a context in which to explore the connection between technological modernity and animation, thus signaling a link between the aerial perspective and the 3D experience of flight.9
