Week 02 Classes

Week 02 Classes

This post is an update for today's lectures.

Today marks the end of the lectures for week 02. The general theme again was about the research proposal but it was stated that we shouldn’t really have it started yet and we should be close to figuring out what we actually want to do as the project as a priority. For myself, that’s the easy part, the difficult one is thinking of a research aim to coincide with my project.

Project Update:

My project has remained relatively the same since last time, I am going to develop my animation skills in Maya (3D) with the overall outcome being solid animations to make up a show reel. I intend on starting to animate tomorrow then analyzing it to become more self-aware of potential gaps in my understanding of performance. I also want to get a case studies done this week to help give me some context with research. I have a few topics which I think would be suitable for my project:

             

Film

Animation

2D animation – Childrens Cartoons – Warner Bros – Disney – Rotoscope – Puppet –   The Adventure of Prince Achmed (Loitte Reiniger)

3D

Games

Theatre

There might of course be more depending on where my project goes but that is for the future.

Research Proposal:

Abstract (write last)

Summary of entire proposal

why a good research project?

what value the research has?

Introduction:

Provides overview of area of interest and will present enough information to make a project engaging for the reader.

Literature Review:

Present relative evidence from outside practice

Reading material sources for information

Summon – academic journals

Review of subject area

Methodology:

What I’m going to do?

Why?

Analyzing media – case studies

Analyzing work

Improving

This is some clear information for the research proposal and will inform the structure of it.

One question I should ask myself is “why am I doing what I’m doing?”. The answer at the moment roughly is that so I can become a better animator. When it comes to the research question I find it easier for my project to just think about what I would like to explore, instead of thinking up some intense research aim that will influence heavily what sort of work I produce, I can think of things I would like to explore and answer them with short animations I have created to explore the concepts. Some examples of things I could explore is the 12 principles, staging and composition. In each of these topics I could definitely flesh it out more and actually get several little exploration questions to tackle. How can the 12 principles influence 3D animations? How can rubber hosing translate into 3D?

Side Note: Just had mini 5 minute meeting with Brain Robinson.

I was a little worried about the research question because I kept thinking of perhaps “mini questions” that I thought could be resolved in just a few animation media tests. So I needed to approach it from an angle of giving myself a more general topic…and I like the aspect of exploring the 12 principles
which Brian mentioned I picked up on in my last meeting with him.
After this meeting I think I would like to base my research aim around the 12 principles. This could be perhaps me wanting to explore them to see if they are more of a guide or if they should perhaps be used more as a rule book. After typing that, I feel that is quite close to something I would like to do. I essentially want to discover how important the 12 principles of animation are to me.

To help me to keep things relative I will have to keep revisiting this research aim of mine.

Summary:

I started writing this post with a still searching mind looking for a research aim but by the end after all this typing I have a more solid idea of exploring the 12 principles, I would also like to take each of the principles and focus and animation on it to fully explore its potential and also to determine how effective it is in 3D.