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Category: FMP & Thesis

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5.1 Week 5 FMP FMP & Thesis

Week 5: Pre-Production for FMP

Introduction

This week I started working on the finalizing the story and choosing the rigs for my final major project. My plan is to complete the pre-production so that I can transition to the production phase smoothly.

Choosing Rigs

The character from my story is a primary school student. He is a 9 year old lean and mischievous boy. I want the character to look a bit sharp and cute. Because of the time limitation I cannot model and rig the character myself. So, my only option is to either get the rigs made or buy it online.

Upon searching it online, I realized that I don’t have very limited options for the kind of rig I need. My mentor suggested me to have a look at pro-rigs as the characters fit perfectly for my story.

I feel that the following character fits my story well and the rig looks very flexible.

Finalizing Story

I already have my story planned out into the form of pre-vis but I feel that there are some loopholes and gaps in the story. I discussed the story of the short film with a few of my friends and they gave me some feedbacks about the gaps in the story.

Final Moodboards

I finalized the moodboards for both real and dream sequences.

Image showing the moodboard of school sequence
Image showing the moodboards of dream sequence
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5.1 Week 4 FMP FMP & Thesis

Week 4: Finalizing Creature Animation

Introduction

This week is the final week before summer break. We got final feedback from our mentor.

Creature Animation

Here is the final version of the dog walk cycle. It still has some issues to fix which I will do in the coming weeks.

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5.1 Week 3 FMP FMP & Thesis

Week 3: Dog Walk Cycle

Introduction

I continued working on the dog walk cycle this week.

Dog Walk Cycle

I mainly worked on the feedback I received last week which was mainly around paws. In this iteration I also worked on the head and shoulder movement.

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5.1 Week 2 FMP FMP & Thesis

Week 2: Creature Animation

Introduction

This week I selected Corgi’s rig to animate the dog walk cycle.

Walk Cycle

I started animating the walk cycle directly in spline. I took the reference from the thumbnails I drew last week and from The Animation Survival kit.

Following is the animation and the feedback I received on the dog walk cycle.

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5.1 Week 1 FMP FMP & Thesis

Week 1: Creature Animation

Introduction

This week we started working on creature walk cycle. We could choose between dog or cat. I am more interested in dog walk cycle. Quadruped walk cycle always look very complicated to me so I am very keen to learn how to animate this walk cycle.

Creature Walk Planning

For any animation exercise, it is always better to record a reference to analyze how the body moves. Here is the reference I chose for the walk cycle to understand the basic fundamentals.

Thumbnails

I did some basic thumbnails for creature walk.

I further took references from Richard William’s dog walk cycle. It helped me a lot to understand the fundamentals of quadruped creature walk.

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FMP & Thesis T Week 15 Theory with Nigel Thesis

Week 15: Research Design, Objectives and the Golden Thread in Research

Introduction

This week we studied about the research objectives, aims and golden thread in research and how all these elements help us to structure our thesis.

Research Objectives

The research objectives take the research aims and make them more practical and actionable. In other words, the research objectives showcase the steps that the researcher will take to achieve the research aims.

Golden Thread

The golden thread simply refers to the collective research aims, research objectives, and research questions for any project . These three elements are bundled together because it’s extremely important that they align with each other, and that the entire research project aligns with them.

Importantly, the golden thread needs to weave its way through the entirety of any research project, from start to end. In other words, it needs to be very clearly defined right at the beginning of the project (the topic ideation and proposal stage) and it needs to inform almost every decision throughout the rest of the project.

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FMP & Thesis T Week 14 Theory with Nigel Thesis

Week 14: One to One Progress Meeting

Introduction

Research Question

Exploring belonging, inclusivity and diversity in Pixar Films: A review of Last Decade

This was initially my research question. I was planning to explore Pixar films and analyse their inclusion of unique themes in their films. Upon discussing this with my teacher, he suggested me that I should narrow down my research question as the current one is to broad and it might not be a very helpful research topic.

After the discussion I tried to shift my topic to a more specific question. 

New Research Question

Belonging, Inclusivity, and Diversity in Pixar Films: Is Pixar succeeding to achieve this goal?

This research topic is very specific and will talk about the Pixar inclusion in animated cinema. This research will also compare the studio with other studios and will discuss if Pixar become successful in achieving the goal.

Bibliography

Haidt, J., & Rose-Stockwell, T. (2019). The Power of Pixar: Exposure to Animated Diversity Influences Children’s Attitudes Toward Outgroups. Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, 19(1), 53-75. 

Babbitt, L., & Johnson, J. (2018). Inside Out and the socialization of emotions: Animating children’s understanding of mental states. Developmental Psychology, 54(9), 1685-1698. 

Carter-Sowell, A. R., & Tien, L. T. (2019). Gender representation in animated films: A content analysis of children’s movies from 1937 to 2018. Sex Roles, 81(9-10), 581-597. 

Cheng, H. W., & Tong, S. T. (2020). Portrayals of female leadership and decision-making in Disney and Pixar animated feature films. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 64(4), 579-598. 

Gray, K. L., & Thompson, C. P. (2019). Empathy and diversity in Pixar’s Inside Out. Psychology of Popular Media Culture, 8(4), 438-450. 

Hsu, J. L., & Oh, S. (2020). Inequality in 1,200 popular films: Examining portrayals of race/ethnicity, LGBTQ, and disability from 2007 to 2018. Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, University of Southern California. 

Purnell, S. (2018). Cultural diversity in Pixar films: An analysis of Coco and Inside Out. Animation Studies, 13, 46-60.

Vazquez, K. C. (2020). What we talk about when we talk about Pixar. Popular Communication, 18(4), 348-361. 

Turning Red (2022) Domee Shi [DVD]. United States: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures.

Soul (2020) Pete Docter [DVD]. United States: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures and Disney Plus.

Luca (2021) Enrico Casarosa [DVD]. United States: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures.Inside Out (2015) Pete Docter  [DVD]. United States: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures.

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FMP & Thesis T Week 13 Theory with Nigel Thesis

Week 13: Sources

Introduction

This week we continued with the development of research design strategies and methods. Apart from that we were given a task to expand our bibliography and find new sources for thesis research.

Bibliography

Haidt, J., & Rose-Stockwell, T. (2019). The Power of Pixar: Exposure to Animated Diversity Influences Children’s Attitudes Toward Outgroups. Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, 19(1), 53-75. 

Babbitt, L., & Johnson, J. (2018). Inside Out and the socialization of emotions: Animating children’s understanding of mental states. Developmental Psychology, 54(9), 1685-1698. 

Carter-Sowell, A. R., & Tien, L. T. (2019). Gender representation in animated films: A content analysis of children’s movies from 1937 to 2018. Sex Roles, 81(9-10), 581-597. 

Cheng, H. W., & Tong, S. T. (2020). Portrayals of female leadership and decision-making in Disney and Pixar animated feature films. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 64(4), 579-598. 

Gray, K. L., & Thompson, C. P. (2019). Empathy and diversity in Pixar’s Inside Out. Psychology of Popular Media Culture, 8(4), 438-450. 

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FMP & Thesis T Week 12 Theory with Nigel Thesis

Week 12: Research Methods

Introduction

This week we studied the different research methods which we will use in our thesis.

Research Methods

Research methods are the strategies, processes or techniques utilized in the collection of data or evidence for analysis in order to uncover new information or create better understanding of a topic

Types of Research

  • Qualitative Research gathers data about lived experiences, emotions or behaviours, and the meanings individuals attach to them. It assists in enabling researchers to gain a better understanding of complex concepts, social interactions or cultural phenomena. This type of research is useful in the exploration of how or why things have occurred, interpreting events and describing actions.

  • Quantitative Research  gathers numerical data which can be ranked, measured or categorised through statistical analysis. It assists with uncovering patterns or relationships, and for making generalisations. This type of research is useful for finding out how many, how much, how often, or to what extent.

  • Mixed Method Research  integrates both Qualitative and Quantitative Research. It provides a holistic approach combining and analysing the statistical data with deeper contextualised insights. Using Mixed Methods also enables Triangulation, or verification, of the data from two or more sources.

Research method for my Thesis

I am planning to use qualitative research for my thesis as I am going to self-analyse the films and see their impact and outcomes.

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FMP & Thesis T Week 11 Theory with Nigel Thesis

Week 11: Thesis Proposal Structure

Introduction

This week we discussed the thesis proposal structure which we will be submitting by the end of this term.

Thesis Proposal Structure

A thesis will usually contain most or all the following sections:

  • Title page
  • Abstract
  • Acknowledgements
  • Contents page(s)
  • Introduction
  • Literature review (sometimes within the introduction) Materials/sources and methods (can be part of every chapter if these are different per chapter)
  • Methodology (all approaches, and methods applied to develop findings, including any not covered in Literature review)
  • Themed topic chapters
  • Results
  • Discussion or Findings
  • Conclusions
  • References
  • Appendices