• Cartoon and Animation Studies
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• s.45
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• pp.479-512
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• 2016

This is a practice-based research, aiming to explore the experiments of Animated Documentary, which is a unique form can explore the mysteries and complexity of memories. Animated Documentary is a medium through which one can reveal an individual's memories within the context of a narrative that is historically situated and influenced. The marriage of animation and documentary gave birth to a new form of film. How to category this new form? Is it an animated short or documentary short? In fact, this raises issue that questioning the nature of animation and documentary. From Shuibo Wang's works, more young Chinese artists began to experiment with symbols (related to the Political Pop Trend) in visual narration, which could also be seen as a reflection of structuralism and semiology in the contemporary Chinese art field. As a case study, this paper demonstrates how animated short "Ketchup" revealed the problems of youth and social turmoil through the memories of a six-year boy. On the Festivals and conferences, the publics were shocked to know "Ketchup" based on true memories, and they were more curious why the crucial things almost be forgotten. Actually forget fulness is one of the layers of memories and Animated Documentary will offer a new way to explore how our memories are shaped.

• Cartoon and Animation Studies
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• s.45
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• pp.397-415
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• 2016

This paper will investigate how animated practice can be a research form as practice-led research in an ethnography approach. This practice-led research will explore the issue of the construction of contemporary identities (based on the strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde) and in particular, the Korean youth culture and identity, exemplified, for example, creation of 'avatars' in the virtual characters of animated online games such as Massively Multiplayer Online Role-playing Games (MMORPGs). In this proposed discussion, I will argue that the sudden period of change in contemporary Korea bears some resemblance to the Victorian era as explored in gothic fiction (e.g. Jekyll and Hyde). In this sense, my animation investigates the connection between the fictional Jekyll and Hyde and a real murder incident by a young Korean boy, which actually happened on the 16th November 2010, in SouthKorea.I will, therefore, construct this practice-led research to obtain the primary data consisted of online and offline practices in 'social ethnography'. These practices engage with specific Korean youth identity, comparing the 'avatar' with the real lives of participants. However, this paper will only focus on the (ethnographic) research process and strategy, using animated (visual) practices, rather than giving the meaning of the specific case of 'Korean-ness'. Eventually, I will explore the four different animated representations as it presents the distinctive animated realties or documentaries by online and offline practices. My intention is to visually interpret the issue of 'Korean-ness' within its socio-cultural context, adapting the convention and code of Jekyll and Hyde concept into an animated documentary in the 'virtual' world (auto-animated documentary by recording avatar interviews and online game footages) and the 'real' world (self-created animated documentary, based on real people and events).

• 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.