• Cartoon and Animation Studies
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• s.45
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• pp.27-50
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• 2016

The present study argues that documentary-animation films, which are based on actual human voices, on the level of representation, constitute a new expansion for the medium of animation films, which serve as testimonies to the real world. Animation films are produced using very diverse techniques so that they are complex to the degree of being indefinable, and documentary films, though based on objective representation, increase in complexity in that there exist various types of artificial interventions such as direction and digital image processing. Having emerged as a hybrid genre of the two media, documentary-animation films draw into themselves actual events and elements so that they conceptually share reality-based narratives and are visually characterized by the trappings of animation films. Generally classified as 'animated documentaries', this genre triggered discussions following the release of , a work that is mistaken as having used rotoscoping transforming live action in terms of the technique. When analyzed in detail, however, this work is presented as an ambiguous medium where the characteristics of animation films, which are virtual simulacra without reality, and of documentaries, which are based on the objective indexicality of the referents, coexist because of its mixed use of typical animation techniques, 3D programs, and live-action images. Discussed in the present study, , , and share the characteristics of the medium of documentaries in that the narratives develop as testimonies of historical figures but, at the same time, are connected to animation films because of their production techniques and direction characteristics. Consequently, this medium must be discussed as a new expansion rather than being included in the existing classification system, and such a presupposition is an indispensable process for directly facing the reality of the works and for developing discussions. Through works that directly use the interviewees' voices yet do not transcend the characteristics of animation films, the present study seeks to define documentary-animation films and to discuss the possibility of the medium, which has expanded as a testimony to the real world.