Week 8/9 More pages, Finished Research Poster, Finishing essay, Polishing and Harvard ref

More Pages
I sketched out a few more pages with this project I definitely bit off more than I can chew however unlike in previous years when I have giving myself a lot of work instead of being able to scale back I just ended up giving myself more work to do instead of realising that I needed to cut down, I just kept adding and adding and adding to the point where I wasn't able to actually complete or finish anything. I think I focused too much on the research and not enough on the practical. My essay is definitely stronger than my practical as it has been in previous years but this year especially for the above-mentioned reasons.

Finished The Research Poster

Finished the Harvard referencing

Finished 2nd draft of essay. Gave it to Ben for feedback.

Feedback received

• The flow of your writing is pretty good and the content is great and engaging make sure,

• where possible, that you include appropriate references and figures (images) to support your discourse.

• MAKE SURE THAT THIS ARE PROPERLY HARVARD REFERENCED – check the libraries guide.

• Don’t bother writing Chapter 1, 2 etc., just give them appropriate headings and make sure that there is a separate title page (possibly with an image on – like a cover page) this should include your research paper title/question – which I still think is too long – and name and word count etc.

• Triple check spellings and grammar – make sure that you read this out loud to someone or get them to read it to you.

• Make sure that there in consistency within your Bibliography not titles in capitals etc – highlighted in yellow.

• The bibliography should be in alphabetical order:

• A reference list for the sources were the figures (images) came from should appear before the bibliography.

• The figures themselves could be either within the main body of the text or alternatively they could appear in a Figure Index, but either way make sure that they are clearly labelled: figure 1

** PROMPT in Action **

Source One
https://www.quora.com/How-would-you-describe-Light-Yagamis-psychological-profile-in-Death-Note-Is-he-a-sociopath-a-psychopath-or-something-else

Presentation 
A bit messy, with different colours of fonts, but reasonable font size.
Relevance Does relate to overall topic, being a discussion relating to an anime
character, and potential underlying mental health issues that may explain their
behaviour.

Objectivity Is a multiple expression of opinion, with the main point of referencing
being Wiki, so not objective, and not correctly evidenced. People expressing opinions
do not indicate they are “qualified” to comment on mental health, as do not indicate they
are currently practising mental health professionals, but still an interesting discussion.
This is quite an abstract idea. No one would make a diagnosis on the basis of observing
behaviour described in a comic book, after all.

Methodology N/A

Provenance Good. Descriptions, of authors, and qualifications.

Timeliness 2017, so within the last 8 years.

Source Two
https://casuistor.tumblr.com/post/149988857881/re-light-yagamis-presumed-sociopathy-and-why-he

Presentation Font size too small.

Relevance Does relate to overall topic, being a discussion relating to an anime
character, and potential underlying mental health issues that may explain their
behaviour.

Objectivity An interesting counter argument, with elements of research but no stated
author. Or referencing. Draws upon American research, so potentially American.

Methodology N/A

Provenance Poor. No clearly stated author. But well argued, with no overwhelming
bias. This is a discussion about a fictional character. Interesting level of self awareness
as states “the ability to read articles and checklists online does not translate into
academic or clinical literacy.”, and that they are not a medical professional but someone
with insight as they state “have had half a year of clinical psych is more exposure than
is typical”, suggesting they have accessed clinical psychology themselves, rather than
being a mental health practitioner.

Comics!

Comics

Comics are a universal language. Visually appealing sequential images that follow a narrative. They represent a primal need to tell and share stories. They are both easy to read and digest making them accessible to anyone. Panels are like scenes in movie or television as such some classic film cinematography is used such as Dutch angles which are used to imply conflict. Each illustration is therefore subject to basic filmmaking techniques and shot compositions. Instead of timing in animation, time is displayed as panels and usually involve action poses. The pacing is also left up to the reader as supposed to live action or animation where you are forced to experience the film at the director’s pace. The bigger, more illustrated panels are usually action scenes. This is because action scenes require more detail.

History

"Before 1929, almost all comics were part of magazines, newspapers or supplements and were not sold separately." Ramsey, T (2013) Western Comics and zines are read left to right and typically speaking have more realistic proportions.
In later years comics where used to spread WWII propaganda and uphold the American image. Caption America and Superman are great example of this. They use colours and patterns associated with the American flag and utilise strong American cultural themes such as Freedom and The American dream

“American children were targeted through some of our most prominent superheroes to date such as Captain America, Superman, Batman and several others. These superheroes embodied the ideal virtues of American soldiers and demonstrated the courage and resolve needed to fight evil during World War II.” Onyon, D (2018)

Comics can take on many different forms and uphold many different meanings and interptations. This is largely in part due the country that they are published in. Japan for example has the largest comic book market. The term Manga “was first used in 1798, to describe the picture book Shiji no Yukikai (Four Seasons) by Santō Kyōden. In 1814, it showed up again, as the title of Aikawa Mina’s Manga hyakujo and the celebrated Hokusai Manga books of drawings by the famous ukiyo-e artist Hokusai.” Kordic A, Pereira L, Martinique E. (2017) In addition to this "The history of manga is said to originate from scrolls dating back to the 12th century, and it is believed they represent the basis for the right-to-left reading style.” Wikipedia (2019)

Manga is characterised by over evacuated facial features and body proportions. These give the artist more freedom to come up with unique and interesting character designs. However, It's not specific to just Japan. Almost every country in East Asia has its own style of manga.

Ramsey, T (2013) The History Of Comics: Decade by Decade Available at: https://the-artifice.com/history-of-comics/ (Accessed: 12^th November 2019)

Onyon, D (2018) THE POLITICAL INFLUENCE OF COMICS IN AMERICA DURNIG WWII Available at: https://www.sagu.edu/thoughthub/the-political-influence-of-comics-in-america-during-wwii (Accessed: 12^th November 2019)

Kordic A, Pereira L, Martinique E. (2017) A SHORT HISTORY OF JAPANESE MANGA Available at: http://www.mangabigbang.co.uk/blog/a-short-history-of-japanese-manga (Accessed: 12^th November 2019)

Wikipedia (2019) Manga Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manga (accessed: 12^th November 2019)

What and Why PROMPT Evaluation

I reference a lot of internet sauces. I find reading things on the internet easier than in books because of my dyslexia and processing disorder. It is something i've been called out on in 1st year and in 2nd year. So i was looking at ways of insuring the quality of information that i was ingesting and also to give the information more validation. Thats where i came across PROMPT evaluation. It is mostly used by the Open University to insure and validate the quality of information on the internet. PROMPT stands for the following

Presentation
Is the information clear?
Is the language right?
Can I find what I need here?
Is it succinct?

Relevance 
Does this information match my needs right now?
Scan it quickly to get an overview.
What is it mostly about?

Objectivity 
Is the language used emotive?
Are opinions expressed?
Are there sponsors?
What are they selling?
What are the vested interests?

Method 
If statistical data is presented, what is this based on?
How was data gathered? Was the sample used really representative?
Were the methods appropriate, rigorous, etc.?

Provenance 
Is it clear who produced this information?
Where does it come from?
Whose opinions are these?
Do you trust this source of information?

Timeliness 
Is this current?
When was it written and produced?
Has the climate/situation changed since this information was made available?
Is it still up-to-date enough?

Sauced from https://www.open.ac.uk/libraryservices/beingdigital/accessible/accessible-pdf-13-evaluation-using-prompt.pdf

Week 7 Case Studies, Question Change, Tokyo Ballet and Kidney Infection

Finished Case Study 1
Finished Case Study 2
Started Case Study 3

Slight Change in Question

As this project has developed I have come to the conclusion that I'm not necessarily looking 

at the impact on Japan society I'm more looking at how anime is reflective of society in general. 

Although I will still be making references Japan's treatment of mental health and disability. I feel 

that broadening the research will strengthen my argument and make for a more interesting 

discussion especially as with the rise of social media and technology, anime is no longer 

limited to just Japan it's something that people can connect with globally and there have been 

anime inspired productions that have been produced in the West so it makes more sense to do 

this from a broader perspective as opposed to just it being contained to Japan.

                                                        Response from Tokyo Ballet

I haven't revived a response from Tokyo 
National Ballet. So I decided to pester them 
on Facebook too, with the exact same 
email!! 

Got a kidney infection. Didn't manage to get any practical done because I was dying. Wont go into gruesome details but I've been pretty ill. Might have to get an extension. 

Week 5/6 Practical, practical practical, another survey and emails

6 pages done
These past two weeks I have been working solely on practical. I have made good progress and have finished 4 of the 12 pages as well as completing my character design. Bringing the total of pages sketched out to 6. 

I have fallen into the pattern of eat, sleep, work, repeat. At present this seems to be working well for me. Although I fear I will burn out after the submission, especially as I am incredibly stressed.It feels as though I still struggle with basic things like proportions and perspective. In some of the shots the background looks flat. Although so the main reason why I wanted to create this comic/zine was to get better at perspective and proportions. So in that respect I have succeeded because although I'm struggling, I am getting better and constantly improving.

2nd character design sheet
I also decided that i needed another character design sheet for all of Ellies friends/ classmates (theres only 2) I'm recycling some sketches that I did for Ellie but that didn't make it into her character model sheet. I also added a pose of them all together so that it gives better context. I've called them Rosie and Jess. Jess is the blue character and Rosie is the red character their dresses where inspired by traditional and contemporary ballet dance costumes.

2nd Survey

I created a second survey which was distributed around the university.

Emailed Tokyo Ballet

I also emailed Tokyo National Ballet to get their opinion on mental health in ballet. Based on the outcome of the second survey I said

Week 4: Everything done over MAF

2 pages of comic
Manchester animation festival was a brilliant experience it really helped to put everything in perspective for me and I left feeling more motivated to do my work then I done in a while. I also spoke to some incredible animators and and I think I found what I want to do and how I want to do it animation wise. I didn't get much work done during this period as I was travelling from Liverpool to Manchester and back again each day during the festival to save money. However I did manage to get two pages of the comic roughed out. I think I'm happy with the layout of these two pages although until they actually in the comic it will be difficult to really contextualise them I also need to add in the speech bubbles and and the dialogue and narrative.


Worked on research
poster
I also created some doodles for my research poster. Doodled a temple, ceremonial bell and samurai. These will be used to contextualise the timeline I have created for the poster.

Week 3 A Slow Week, drafts, Surveys and Sketches

I've had a slow week

Character Design
I finished the character design sheet and I have coloured it. Although I'm not 100% happy with how some of the poses turned out as as Ben has pointed out the top left pose looks as though her chest is about to break also show the position of the bun changes slightly in each pose. I also struggled with facial expressions and features I couldn't seem to get the proportions right in relation to each other that made the comment that they looked scary and disturbing.

Rough Draft
I shave submitted a (very) rough draft of chapters 1 and 2 and I have now started chapter 3. Which is about the  1st case study of the anime Perfect Blue which deals with multiple personality disorder and schizophrenia. 

Survey
I also created a survey to find out if people think the portrayal of mental health and disability in Japanese anime has had a positive or negative effect on Japanese society. The results will be collected at the end of this month and will be used to triangulate my research.

Analysing Comics
Following on from my discussion with Ben at the start of the week I have also been analysing comics in order to understand how they use panels to create a narrative and to find inspiration for my own zine. I will write everything up next week and post it to the blog.

Rough Sketches
From here I have started to sketch out some rough layouts. As next week is MAF I will be only be doing practical. Although I will still be taking notes and developing my ideas.

Week 2 Research Poster, Chapter 2, Developing a Narrative and Character Design Sheet

Research Poster
To inform my essay I have started to create a research poster on the last 500 years of Japan's history. As for the design, I took inspiration from my triangulation poster that I made last year and made the poster look like a bored game or dungeon maze game. Although the primary focus is the last 500 years I will reference to what is considered the very start of Japanese history with a Dogū statue I will also be making other references such as a Dōtaku, a kind of Japanese ceremonial bell and the Byōdō-in, a historical Buddhist temple. I chose the key dates based on what I though to be the most socially and culturally relevant to modern Japan. I asked myself what has made up the Japan I know today? This was in part due to Dr Alan who gave me some helpful advice. 

Chapter 2
I also started and finished a rough draft of chapter 2 which explores this history of Japan. It doesn't go into as much detail as I did last year but I tried to pick out points that I would be able to call back to later on in the essay. I have also started the rough drafts of case studies Deathnote and A Silent Voice.

Developing a Narrative
I developed a narrative for my manga zine. It is going to be based on the Shōnen genre of manga, but for girls. As i want to portray a positive image and role model. It will be about a girl who struggles to get into dance school. Once in she feels like an outsider amongst all the other girls because she sees herself as inferior to them. When in fact it is all in her head and actually a lot of the students like her and admire her for getting in despite not being not coming from a dance background. She becomes depressed and develops an unhealthy attitude towards food and begins to see herself as fat whenever she looks in a mirror. She struggles through the academic year, nursing an unhealthy body image. dealing with the paranoia and anxiety and  the auditions for the end of year show are coming up. Her teacher casts her as a backup dancer. But her classmates are all there for her to support her and seeing how upset she is at only getting a minor part, they petition the tutor to re-cast her in a better role. Instead her tutor gives her her own solo. The solo is what I intend to create for EP.

Character Design Sheet
I started the character design sheet. I made good progress. Starting off with doodles in my sketchbook. I played around with size and proportion. I initially wanted to do it in an adult chibi style but I decided not to because a) I couldn't find any manga that used this style as examples and b) I want  to be able to rotoscope the character for extended practice so the proportions need to be realistic.

Week 1 - Emails, Talks, Case Studies and Gnatt Chart

Emailed academics
I have been emailing Japanese academics to help narrowing down Japan's history on the most culturally significant points. So I have emailed 7 people I've received 2 responses so far. Although it seems like they're unable to help me. I'll give the rest of them until Tuesday next week to respond, then I will send them another email. I will also email new people too.

Talked with Ben
I talked with Ben; he suggested I make some research posters. So I'm going to make 3. One on general Japanese history up until the 20th century, One with more of a focus on the last 100 years of animation. the 3rd will be a triangulation poster based on my main 3 case studies.

Started case studies
I have also started doing my case studies this week. I decided to drop "Stiens;gate" as a case study because it is an incredibly difficult show to get into given the subject matter is time travel and it goes quite deep into the science fiction side of things. I couldn't find enough material to give a convincing argument so I couldn't back up any of my thoughts with quotes or evidence. It's just not an anime that is talked enough about either online or in academic texts and when it is talked about it's never about the main characters mental health.The focus is often shifted to the time travel aspect of the anime. But in my opinion the main character has schizophrenia or at the very least shows schizophrenic tendencies, also his friends are going through their own mental struggles and I feel like it is a show which definitely needs to be looked more into but it's so hard to get actually get into it

I made a Gnatt chart to keep myself on track. 

What went well this week?

• I feel a lot better after speaking to Ben. I have more of a clear idea of what i'm doing going forward
• Very productive week. 
• Felt like i was communicating well

What could've gone better?

• I didn't get everything done that I had planned, I will have to pick up the slack next week. 
• Time management continues to be an issue even into 3rd year, I accidentally missed a dyslexia support session.

Plan for next week

• Continue making research posters
• Continue writing case studies, looking into psychological character analysis using professionals in the field of oligarchy to back up arguments 
• Start practical.
• Have a rough draft of 3 chapters done. 

Black Swan: A Review

Black Swan is a film about the production of swan lake. The movie follows Nina a dancer at the New York Ballet City Company as she is cast in the titular role of the black swan in the company’s production of Swan Lake. I clocked what the plot was going to be pretty early on in the film. Not only as the audience do, we see the main character portray the swan queen in Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake buy the film itself plays out like the ballet. It documents her decent into a living hell as she is cast as in the main role of swan queen.

Her mother smothers her treating her like a child as well and holding her back developmentally and physically. She is living vicariously through her daughter, having had to give up her own career as a ballet dancer to raise her. When Nina gets the role of Swan Queen we see her grow up and break free from her mother but in doing so she loses her sanity. It touches briefly on eating disorders. But focuses mainly on the characters spiralling hallucinations. Mirrors are used as a storytelling device to represent how she sees herself as well as showing the white/black swan mirror image. 

I liked how they dealt with the hallucinations. They use a techniques that I've seen before mostly in horror films but it's used to make the audience feel as afraid as the main character is feeling because it's from their perspective so you don't know whether what you're seeing is real until the character realises that it's not real and so it's another way of putting the audience in the characters shoes and making them more relatable.

The film also looks briefly at harassment. The Nina’s boss Thomas Leroy or The Gentleman creates a power dynamic between the two. She feels grateful to him for giving her the role when he could've given it to someone else. He's made her feel dependent on him. This film came out in 2010. 9 years before the Me2 movement. Why did nobody question or challenge his actions then? Why is this still relevant 9 years later?

I have chosen to study mental health in ballet because on the surface I did ballet for 2 years when I was about 14. I stopped doing it I had a lot going on in school, but also, I found that the ballet school environment wasn't healthy for me especially at that time in my life. There was a lot of pressure to look and act a certain way which just wasn't me. I found that I was changing myself to fit what others wanted and expected. It was rough.

Animation and ballet have the same sort of troubles. In Ballet you only see the final performance but not the days, weeks and months of rehearsing. The years of ruthless training and rejection. Choreographing the dance, practising the dance practising the dance moves, strength training especially for boys. Boys in ballet have it especially rough because if the social stigma. Some people don't make the cut, they'll find the smallest most seemingly insignificant thing about your body and that'll be why you can't do it. Your too tall, too small, that slight curve in your spine, your left knee is slightly higher up than your right and on and on. In animation the audience only sees the final animation, but they don't see the hundreds of hours that have gone into making it. The years of practising drawing, studying acting, studying anatomy and learning cinematography then the stress of putting yourself through art school so that you can learn the skills needed to animate well. It takes it’s toll on you physically, eye strain, repetitive strain injury, carpal tunnel, bad back. The social isolation and long hours. Then the rejections and setbacks. Then some people assume that animation is for children and you are told that you should get a 'real job'.