A collection of essays such as this begs – and hopefully responds to – a surfeit of pressing critical and creative questions. Animated documentary's expansion over the last two decades or so has not necessarily been accompanied by a settled creative or critical consensus regarding what exactly constitutes an animated documentary film, not least because the term ‘animated documentary’ almost sounds oxymoronic. This volume therefore considers if the use of animation, a medium conventionally associated with fiction, the fantastic and children's entertainment, can constitute a creatively and ethically viable documentary aesthetic. In various ways, its essays explore how animated imagery, which often assumes obviously artificial, non-indexical visual forms, can be used to create and communicate the qualities of believability, authenticity and factuality commonly ascribed to and expected from documentary artefacts. The writers contributing to this book also consider the varied kinds of subject matter animation might effectively document, and the extent to which animated documentary reflects and influences contemporary understandings and experiences of ‘reality’ and ‘the real’. Tracing the historical roots of animated documentary and where its future directions might lead, Drawn from Life identifies a range of theoretical and practice-led bases from which animated documentary cinema can be productively understood and reimagined. The book draws its case studies from a varied sweep of films, filmmakers, historical eras, non-fiction cultural contexts (such as journalism, science, the military and education, to name a few), and audiovisual forms and techniques. The cumulative result, we hope, is a theoretically suggestive and historically comprehensive account of animated documentary's early cinema origins through to its contemporary manifestations in diverse arenas such as live-action cinema, video, digital art, scientific research and educational practice.

But Drawn from Life makes no claim to be the last or definitive word on its chosen subject. Rather, it seeks to raise new questions and open up fresh lines of investigation in relation to animated documentary. It does so by drawing attention to (not least by drawing substantially on) the ongoing international growth of animation studies. The book's essays present interdisciplinary inves-tigations into the aesthetic, practical, ethical, epistemological, philosophical, technological and political issues associated with animated documentary cinema.