STUDIES

Searching for a visible concept: An attempt to define animated film semiotics on the example of Nedeljko Dragić's work

The text that follows looks at semiotics in animation, a branch of semiotics which, as far as the author knows, has practically never appeared in its pure form. Such barely existing scientific discipline is here derived from the comparison with a relatively established film semiotics, considering the similarity between animated and film (photographic) moving images, the basic characteristics of which in most part overlap. A case study was conducted on the animated films by Croatian author Nedeljko Dragić due to their complexity and richness of layers in terms of symbolic charge. Instead of treating the artificial movement in animation as a mimetic reflection of reality, as most of his colleagues do, Dragić takes interest in a moving concept, in a though brought to life, in visual anthropology and in animation documentarism, particularly topical in our times. For Dragić, a viewer is an active consumer and he perceives the act of screening as intersubjective communication, an idea that will become popular only in our postmodern times. Of course, this is not a coincidence. This is the intuition of the author who has always looked at the future with the full force of his creative energy.

Midhat Ajanović