ABSTRACT
Acting and animating are arts of simulation and reproduction: the dream of creating animal and human life by means other than natural reproduction. In Universal's The Bride of Frankenstein (1935), VFX experts John P. Fulton and David Stanley Horsley created homunculi optically by miniaturizing live actors while an artist like Ray Harryhausen even animated a (winged) homunculus stop-frame, as an evil magician's aid in his 'super-spectacle' The Golden Voyage of Sinbad. Today's alchemists who call themselves scientists create artificial life through genetic engineering and human cloning. Animators, however, accomplish the process in a much simpler way. They create their little men by using digital imagery or simply a pen. Facing auspicious occasions, animators will have a chance of not only acting but also creating. In some early animation, as in the Out of the Inkwell series by Max Fleischer, the hand of the animator appears and it looks as if the drawn character was touched by the hand of God.
