As this little girl was able to explain, animation is a form of filmed storytelling in which, instead of actors performing live, still drawings or models are used to portray actions; each frame portrays a minute element of a movement, either drawn, or modelled (as with claymation, or model figures) or computer-generated, which when projected at 24 frames a second, simulate movement. Animation as a technique is thus very far from being representationally realistic in the way that photographic images are; as such, the form presents a number of challenges for scholars interested in evaluating children's understanding of and critical responses to media (for example, Hodge and Tripp, 1986). Animation is a genre extremely popular with children, and one which has aroused some concern about the social impact of its exaggerated representations of extreme violence (for example, Gerbner et al., 1978; Kline, 1993). But, as this child's comments make clear, it is a genre whose basic technique makes a profound difference to the way the events portrayed are interpreted: they are ‘only drawings’. Animation, as this girl points out, is not bound by the rules of realism applying to live human characters, and from this many other kinds of judgements follow.