Study Task 8: Evaluation

My practical didn't go as planned. I ran out of Time to properly create a good Web series and upload content regularly. Because of this the data I collected, as a result, wasn't what I was expecting. 

I struggled with time management. 
I struggled to find a style that worked with both American and Japanese audiences. 
I had hoped to create more small animations. 

• I also learnt about how to structure a narrative for a short online format and what would be considered offensive. I learnt about how to structure a marketing campaign 
• The creation of this animated web series required extensive planning. Effective time management was essential to ensure that a good Web series was created with a regular upload of content. As this time management was not achieved, the data collected may have differed from the expected results.
• Time was dedicated to creating an effective style that would be appreciated by American and Japanese audiences. This practical required effective project management, and to learn how to structure a narrative for a short online format, taking into consideration what would be considered offensive, and how to structure a marketing campaign.
• Step one: an analysis of other successful campaigns to identify what made them successful.
• Step two: create a narrative inspired by an aesthetic style, based on the theoretical research undertaken.
• Step three: a selection of characters, pulled from the narrative, to further develop and produce model sheets. Initial sketches were used as a starting point, with the incorporation of each character’s personality into there design and their interactions with each other. Colour theory was also incorporated into the designs, for example, Willhelm (Will) wears green, so Dee Dee wears complementary colours, purple and yellow. Xander is a child and interacts with both Dee Dee and Will, so his character sheet incorporates green, purple, yellow and red. Colour psychology was also utilised in the aesthetic creation of the characters. Will is dressed in a green military uniform, representing his disgust at the state of his country and goes to join the war efforts. Xander’s clothes are blue, representing the sadness he feels about his father leaving. His pants are also orange, representing his sense of fun and orange is blue’s complementary colour on the colour wheel.
• DeeDee’s yellow top represents a bright and happy person. She is content with her life, but sad because her husband has left, so blue is also incorporated into her colour pallet. A lineless style was initially considered as this was perceived to be more visually appealing when animated. Black outlines were eventually used, as they stood out better against the dark backgrounds. A lineless style was used for specific scenes to enhance the animation and aid the narrative.
• Step four: required a Facebook banner. Four designs were developed. Feedback showed a preference for design incorporating ghosts. At this point, the 731 idea was dropped for something less offensive. Drastic story or character changes were not needed.
• Step five: publish on Facebook
• Step six: incorporated short storyboards of less than 6 panels to tell a short narrative. They aided the completion of the animation, inform the narrative and engage the audience. Feedback from the target audience suggested that a de-saturated, grungy look should be used.

Final Outcome

As stipulated, I have created 3 storyboards for my final outcome. Each document the characters death. I could animate these in the future if I want to

 What went well?

• The lineless style really came into its own. I really like the seamless transition between background and foreground.
• I think the shapes and colours work well together the lighting looks really good. As it was my first time attempting to light a scene and do more than just flat shading, I think it turned out well. 
• The narrative is pretty clear, although Xanders death could be more obvious that he drowned

What could be improved?

• Xanders death could have been more emphasised
• I should have stuck to a more consistent layout for the storyboards. DeeDee is on a board where there are 9 panels instead of 6, However, I couldn't keep this up as it was too taxing on my computer's power. In hindsight, I should've stuck to 6 panels. 

Name choice

After deciding to abandon the 731 plotline I struggled to come up with an original name. I had planned to call the series 7 days, 3 hours and 1 minute but I couldn't call it this anymore as it was no longer the main theme. i brainstormed some new names and came up with the following. 

Descent
The Descent
Until death 
Dying Descent 
Descending Death
7 days
Until Now 

I ended up going with Until Now. Because until now, Wills character was happy and had a family and a life. He was stable and happy until now. So I feel like it tells more of a story without giving the story away. It also poses a question to the audience, Until now what? Hopefully, this will intrigue the audience enough to make them engage with the story and Facebook page

With regards to copyright and name uniqueness, from what I can tell, after extensive searches on google, bing, yahoo and Ecosia (different search engines will send out diffrernt web crawlers) there doesn't seem to be any name competitors. 

Data Collected and Analysed

From the data collected, over the course of just one week, the adds reached over 1000 people. From here you can see a clear correlation between the work produced and the number of people who had engaged with the post. Thus proving in a practical sense that indeed, Anime and American animation has been influenced by the rise of social media and technology. 

One thing I found creepy/ interesting was the fact that you can track peoples interests and behaviours I wonder what they use to code the algorithm? and how do they code it in such a way that it learns your behaviours?










In order to target a specific audience, I used the tools available to target a male/female audience in both Japan and America. Due to the graphic nature of the content, I set it to be 18+ as this is the most widely accepted age when you are considered an adult. 

From the graph, you can see that just one of the posts on the Until Now facebooks page gathered over 300 views. This shows the correlation between social media marketing and animation. From here I was able to build a small following that I otherwise would not have been able to gather. 

Unfortunately, I accidentally deleted 2 posts with similar viewerships. But from the data gathered, the collective sum of the 3 posts would have come to just over 1000 views. 

Character sheets and Banner Design

I struggled overall with the character model sheets. I couldn't come up with interesting and dynamic poses for all of the changes characters so I use a lot of references. This shows as some of the poses are really stiff and don't look right. During the feedback, one person even said that DeeDee looked like she was going to the toilet on the floor because of the way she was sitting in one of the poses.

It was also suggested during the feedback that I lower the saturation of the characters for the banner.

Today I created the banner. Initially, I was going to have a blood splatter/dragging effect that would read 731.

I still wanted to go for a blood splatter effect. But I also wanted the story to be hinder at. I think the ghost one makes for the best banner. But I will put this to a vote and see what others think

Study Task 6 - Planning a Practical Page

complete the following sections with specific examples, and a brief explanation of how you have made these decisions)

Primary Research	Identify, collect, record and evaluate visual material from the following sources: create a linear narrative that will follow the events over the course of a week  develop character design sheets post finished designs on facebook. use facebook analytical data to aid my recherche and development use audience feedback to aid the development of narrative so that the audience stays engaged with the narrative
Secondary research	Draw, photograph, record and develop my own visual material through the following activities: case studies mood boards  looking at different styles reading books
Media & Processes	Visually and practically explore my subject using the following media and processes: creating a narrative, creating character model sheets x3, small storyboards and small very short animations to be posted as teasers.  facebook banner and page. Cross-posting with Reddit and 4chan.
Context	Contextualise, reference, analyse my work in relation to the following practitioners/disciplines: 3D 2.5D 2D Elfin Lied Grave of the fireflies 5 Nights at Freddie's & Deadpool

Study Task 5 - Practical Approaches

Write a formal proposal. (Two Paragraphs)

The purpose of this practical is to demonstrate the effectiveness of social media in promoting, curating and distributing animation. The intention is to create a narrative, character designs, character model sheets and finally storyboards that will inform the development of this practical. The results will be posted on a social media platform such as Facebook as though it is due for actual release. Te data from thus will then be collected and used to inform the theoretical.

The advertising campaign itself will be a "guerilla" style campaign. The term "guerilla" is a style of campaign that is used to promote products or services, using very little money. It involves grabbing the audience attention and often focuses on unconventional methods such as those used in Deadpool and 5 Nights at Freddies.

Study Task 4 - Introduction

In my essay, I will explore Western and Eastern animation, and I will be focusing on American and Japanese productions, in the light of current technological and social advances. My aim is to discover how American and Japanese productions have been influenced by technology and social media. Firstly, I will provide historical and contextual information, I will then go on to explore themes and trends within the animation industry. My essay will take a historical and contemporary approach and I will make reference to Japanese Anime, which has been imported into America. I will be looking at what has influenced American animation and Japanese anime. My research for the essay will specifically include Astro Boy, Beserk, Toy Story and RWBY and this will be presented as short case studies. I will establish at what points in time American and Japanese productions were similar in terms of technological advancement and at what points they diverged, in an attempt to answer my question.

Study Task 3 - Images and Theory

For this task i chose to create a poster based on the game Tetris (for the layout only) People said it had a fun design, with clear concepts and organisation. certain members of my peer group suggested that my proposed resherch may not be enough and i may need to do a survey in addition to a web series. To a certain extent i agree. I will take this into consideration.  I was also given some more anime and cartoons to watch 

Study Task 2 - Reading and Understanding Texts

for this task, I read the following books as a starting point. I have collected the key dates to use as a starting point for my research. Online Sauces where also used to supplement and fill gaps in the timelines.   This has been arranged into an aesthetically pleasing timeline poster. 

Anime: A History

Animation: A World History vol 1

Illusion of life

The Culture of Connectivity: A Critical History of Social Media

Social Networks in the History of Innovation and Invention

• 

(In case you couldn't read my hand writing because it was too small i wrote everything down)

American Animation Timeline 

• 1906 Humorous Phases of Funny Faces by J. Stuart Blackton is widely regarded as one of the first animated cartoons

• 1908 Fantasmagorie is the first animated film using hand-drawn animation

• 1914  Gertie the Dinosaur was the first animation to use inbetweening and keyframing and looping animation  

• rotoscope technique was invented by animator Max Fleischer in 1915

• 1919 Felix the Cat

• 1928 Steamboat Willie was the first cartoon to have sound matched with the animation.

• 1932 Flowers and Trees, a Silly Symphonies, For the first time, Won an Academy Award for the best cartoon.

• 1937 snow white it was the first animated feature-length film ever

• Fantasia 1940

• Make Mine Music 1946

• Melody Time 1948

• Cinderella 1950

• 1960 The Flintstones. It was the first animated cartoon series.

• The Jungle Book 1967

• Tron 1982, included an early form of CGI animation.

• pixar 1986

• 1988  Who Framed Roger Rabbit

• Beauty and the Beast  1991

• Toy Story the first feature-length film to be animated entirely in 3D 1995

• Tarzan 1999 used deep canvas

• Treasure Planet 2002 deep canvas, CGI. and traditional

• 2009 Avatar the first “3D” (did Toy Story not do 3D first???)  live action film

• Spiderman into the Spider-verse 2019

Japanese Animation Timeline

Japanese animation could have possibly been around for longer than Western animation. However, most Japanese animated films were destroyed in WWI and WWII. In addition to this, the Japanese film industry used to repurpose the old film reels and use them for newer material, effectively destroying the original film once it had had its run. It is because of this that this timeline remains incomplete, because the films that were created between the gaps, could not be found.

• in 1923, there was an earthquake in Japan. This meant that the anime industry was forced to start from scratch because lots of celluloid film reel was destroyed.

• Ofuji Noburo created The Thief of Baguda Castle (1926), this film was the first to make its presence felt outside of Japan.

• The first full-length theatrical film in the history of Japanese anime was a propagandist film designed to lift morale and commitment to the war effort. It was entitled Momotaro's Divine Sea Warriors (1945).

• In 1956, Toei Animation was created. Okawa Hiroshi's intentions were to become the Disney of the East (which is interesting, because Hayao Miyazaki came from Toei Animation to form Studio Ghibli, which is now considered to be the Japanese equivalent of Disney).

• In 1963, Fuji Television broadcast a 30-minute television series, Tetsuwan Atomu, otherwise known as Astro Boy. 

• In 1970, Tetsuwan Atomu was dubbed into English, as Astro Boy.

• In 1976, 3,000 leagues In Search of Mother was broadcast.

• In 1980, Astro Boy, the colour television series was broadcast.

• 1985, Studio Ghibli was founded.

• During 1986 - 1989, the anime, Dragon Ball was broadcast.

• In the 1990s, American studios began to dub and sub anime.

• In 1995, Sailor Moon was broadcast.  it became the original blueprint for the magical girl show.

• 1996, Pokemon came to Nintendo

• 1997, Pokemon was adapted into an anime.

• In 2001 spirited away

• In 2003, Disney acquired the rights to dub Ghibli films from Japanese into English.

• 2013, Miyazaki announced that he was retiring

Technology/ Social Media Timeline

• 1969 the first switched network was created by linking 4 current nodes in Utah

• 1972 the first program devoted to email was introduced

• 1976 queen Elizabeth sends out an email

• 1981 csnet is released to 56 computers allowing them to network without the government's involvement.

• 1983 domain name system was created

• 1990 a hypertext system is developed

• 1991 the world wide web becomes public

• 1995 NSF sells domain names for £50

• 1997 six degrees the first social media network is launched

• 1998 Netscape releases code for navigator

• 1999 wifi becomes standard

• 2001 blackberry releases the first phone with wifi

• 2003 myspace

• 2004 facebook is created

• 2005 youtube is created

• 2006 twitter

• 2010 Instagram

Summery of Peer Group Review

• The design was fun and interesting

• I didn't really analyse the texts

• It was easy to follow. 

• The writing could have been clearer. 

Study Task 1 - Initial Ideas

•What are your interests?

Anime, gore, storytelling. character development, visual development, guerrilla marketing, art, social media, the internet, culture, Japan. Germany, animation, game design, web development, horror stories, photography, digital and creative media.........cats

•What have you found out?

I have been looking into the history of Japanese anime and American animation. I think I would like to research these and see how they have been influenced by social media a technology as those are my biggest current interests. 

•How have you collected information?

I have been scouring the internet far and wide. On my quest for knowledge, I have discovered the so-called cal-arts style and I have been looking at that and the supposed similarities with anime.i can also9 read books. I should start off by looking at the history of both Japanese anime and American animation. How have they evolved and at what point do they start crossing over?

•How can you extend your research?
I could extend my research by collecting primary sauce and identifying what peoples opinions are regarding anime. 

•What planning might you need to do?
I will need to plan out my essay. This could be through bullet points or I could break it down into sections. I will need to investigate my theme.