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Design Research Dissertation / Bachelors of Design (Honours) in Creative Media / Taylor's University
Assignment 1: Draft Dissertation
Table of contents
1. MODULE INFORMATION BOOKLET (MIB)
2. WEEKS
Week 1 - Week 2 - Week 3 - Week 4 - Week 5 - Week 6 - Week 7
3. PROGRESSION
3.1 Literature Review
3.2 Visual Analysis
3.2.1 Joshua and the Promised Land
3.2.2 Hoodwinked!
3.2.3 Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
3.2.4 Reviews
3.3 Draft
3.4 Refining
4. FINAL
5. REFLECTION
1. MODULE INFORMATION BOOKLET (MIB)
This is the Module Information Booklet for this module:
2. WEEKS
Week 1
This was an introductory session for the module so Dr. Hayati and Dr. Jinchi did general briefings first behind what would be in the assignment line-up. We were given the task to write a Literature Review Matrix based on the research we'd done in DRM (Design Research Methodology).
Feedback:
- Remember to compare your articles to find similarities and differences
- Use the references as a guide to build your matrix.
Week 2
No class due to Public Holiday but still had tasks to do like doing the Literature Review Matrix and starting to put work into the Draft Dissertation.
Feedback: None
Week 3
Unfortunately I did not attend this week’s class but reviewed the recording for General Feedback.
Feedback:
- Make sure the content under Themes is distinct from being a sub-topic itself.
- Find better relevant articles for your literature review.
Week 4
This week focused on the progress of our writing for the Literature Review and the starting of our Research Methodology writing as well.
Feedback:
- Even if the initial research was rushed, try to form it into something more sound in your dissertation.
- Describe the whole methodology process with the right terminologies.
- Give method justification in 3.0
- If you are conducting Observational or Comparative Analysis, ensure you have a Bias Mitigation Strategy.
- The use of “Influence” in the W.T (Working Title) can make sense IF the results of the survey actually shows “influence”.
- Take words from Research Objectives and Questions to form a more fitting Title. (exploring, perception etc.)
- Use the phrase “Summary of…” instead of Conclusion to avoid confusion.
- Structure of Lit. Review is incorrect. It should be derived from all 4 articles and compared/argued with instead of Individual Structure.
Week 5
Unfortunately, I did not attend class. Started to feel an overwhelming anxiety so I started to avoid the module altogether. But still continued to work on my Dissertation on the side with my other modules. Mainly focused on conducting the visual analysis this week.
Week 6
Unfortunately, I did not attend class. Anxiety was still present but still continued to work on my Dissertation on the side with my other modules. Focusing to finish up visual analysis this week then working on the Analysis and Discussion section.
Week 7
Unfortunately, I did not attend class. Was focused on other modules and still felt the nervousness. I tried my best to rush my progress to make it to the deadline. Focused on finishing up the Analysis and Discussion section and getting out an Abstract and Conclusion.
3. PROGRESSION
I took a refresher for my Research Methodology items since it’s been a couple of semesters since I took it and I hadn’t opened them at all since. But it was good to reflect on it because I could now see where some gaps in the research were that I hadn’t detected during the module. For example, the research topic “The Influence of Texturing and Rendering on Audience Expectations of 3D Animated Films” itself feels a bit too “wide” or “technical” to me now and the way I conducted the research was also not too strong of a foundation unfortunately.
However, I‘ve set that aside for now and will focus more on dissecting/sorting out my Critical Review to fit into the Literature Review Matrix. Since most of the column headers are already based on what’s written in my Critical Review, I’ll focus more on finding similarities and differences between the articles. If I have time, I’ll try to read up more articles relating to my topic and apply it to the LRM
3.1 Literature Review
My Research Methodology initially had only 3 articles to work off of so I decided to find another one to make my research a bit more stronger and thankfully, I found an article that would fit well with my overall research. It was an article by Hammer and Adamo that talked about exaggeration in animation. That article can be seen row 4 of the LRM below:
File 3.1.1 Literature Review Matrix.
Then I started to write out my Literature Review using the info in the LRM. During a class feedback session though, I was a bit nervous because I didn’t seem to grasp the Literature Review properly and Dr. Hayati pointed that out. I mistook the previous missed class recording about the Literature Review and went to write about each individual article instead of comparing them to one another. I’ll have to rewrite the Literature Review again but thankfully now with a better understanding.
3.2 Visual Analysis
From some feedback with Dr. Hayati, it seemed that my conducted survey being the only method of research I had felt a bit weak so I decided on my own that I'd try conduct a visual analysis of sorts to make my research a bit more interesting and "grounded".
I chose the movies via an online forum, also known as a ‘subreddit’ (from the website of Reddit.com), under the topic of “r/MovieSuggestions”. This subreddit is where users suggest movies or ask for movie suggestions based on a requested genre or good/bad rating.
The movies I'd chosen were:
- Joshua and The Promised Land
- Hoodwinked!
- Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
I chose the films by observing the general comments about the films but mainly wanted to get a criteria where 1 film had bad visuals and bad plot, 1 had bad visuals but interesting plot and lastly, 1 had good visuals and good plot. I'd settle on three films and no more for the visual analysis because I did not want to add more workload to my already filled bag of work (,; ⩌ ;,).
3.2.1 Joshua and The Promised Land
Joshua and the Promised Land is a low-budget Christian animated film released in 2003 that is based on the biblical story of Joshua leading the Israelites into Canaan. The story follows Joshua, an anthropomorphic lion child/teenager, as he travels into the biblical tales guided by an angel and takes on the responsibility of guiding God's people into the Promised Land.
The plot itself is very jarring and I couldn't help myself from laughing at times (not at the religious aspects, of course) when I remind myself of the absolutely bizarre plot of having a child relive the wars depicted in the Bible.
Additionally, the visuals of the film are most well-known for its extremely dated and awkward CGI. The character models are stiff, with exaggerated facial features that don't quite fit as well on the poorly modeled and textures anthropomorphic characters. Animations often felt robotic, with characters moving unnaturally or sliding across the ground rather than walking convincingly. The environments are simple and sparsely detailed, and the lighting and textures have a very artificial look that made everything appear flat.
I'd actually have come across this film many years ago when it had a resurgence on the internet because of its bizarreness. However, I never sat down to fully watch it so it felt like an absolute fever dream having to watch it 3 times just to find things to analyse.
3.2.2 Hoodwinked!
Hoodwinked! is a family film released in 2005 that's a fun twist on the on the classic Little Red Riding Hood fairy tale by turning it into a detective mystery. Interestingly, the film follows a non-linear storytelling where we get the same events told through different characters' points of view: Red, the Wolf, Granny, and the Woodsman. The mystery is that of piecing together who in the town has been stealing recipes from local businesses including that of Red's.
I found the story itself to be very amusing and entertaining! The twist of who was actually the bandit surprisingly gave a shock to me during my first-time watch. Some of the humour was definitely dated but it was overall a very fun film and it didn't feel like too much of a drag during all of my three watches.
Hoodwinked! also has fairly simple CGI but definitely better than Joshua and the Promised Land in regards to overall style and quality. The textures are also fairly simple in the application where sometimes different things would share the same smoothness that made scenes feel a bit flat. Sometimes they'd be some inconsistencies with the details of the textures too like where Red had a cartoony face but also really detailed eyelashes that clashed quite a bit at times.
3.2.3 Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse revolves around Miles Morales, an ordinary teenager from Brooklyn whose life changes after he is bitten by a radioactive spider. As he begins to develop superhuman abilities, he is unexpectedly introduced to Spider-People from different dimensions, all brought together by a malfunctioning machine built by the Kingpin.
The plot of the film itself is quite simple since its a coming of age story and also the origin of Miles Morales as the new Spider-Man of his timeline. I related quite a bit to his flaws of doubting himself and being unsure about his future. Overall, the story was very fun and cool since many of the Spider-People were characters I wasn't really familiar with despite being a Spider-Man fan. It was a breeze having to watch the movie 3 times because each time, whilst i was observing the visuals and texture, I'd find some easter eggs I had before and that felt cool.
Visually, the film was very stunning. It isn't a surprise that this movie won awards because of how unique the style of animation was at the time of its release. The movie embraces a very bold and unique visual identity inspired by comic books and graffiti art. They also played around with the textures and styles of the different Spider-People as well which made each of them increasingly unique from one another.
3.2.4 Reviews
At this point, a part of me is regretting a bit with conducting the visual analysis because it added to the pile of work I needed to do but as it’ll help deepen my research, I decided I’ll just continue on with it.
Next, I worked on doing observations of online reviews on IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes. For context, they are both websites made for people to rate movies they've watched. It's not a very concrete or stable way to extract reviews but I wanted to just get a general idea of the audience's reception to the movies for my analysis
3.3 Draft
I started by creating the conceptual framework in Figma that I referenced online since at this point I'm just self-studying.
My current title for the Dissertation was also a bit too “advanced” in that the initial Research Methodology title had the word “Influence” which in the research world would take extensive research and trends to find evidence of the influence, so I’ll try to use Dr. Hayati’s recommendations of working titles.
The survey findings were easy to do since I’d done most of it already from Methodology so I just brought them into the Dissertation.
File 3.3.1 Initial version of Draft Dissertation [PDF].
When writing the Analysis and Discussion parts, I was writing a bit blind because of myself not attending the classes and avoiding the class recordings so it definitely felt a bit off at first but I tried my hardest to work around this self-assessed workflow I'd created for myself (which evidently is quite faulty (╥ แด ╥)
3.4 Refining
Because I was rushing with the work, I'd rely on ChatGPT with helping me in my refinements of the Draft Dissertation. Prompts that I used were mostly in terms of "Rewrite [paragraph of text] to better fit an academic dissertation." but I'd edit the best I could to make sure it fit with the rest of the text in the Dissertation.
The most I edited were the Analysis and Discussion part since I wasn't very confident in my writing within the context of the Dissertation because I thought it was too simple or too much.; especially regarding the amount of points needed for the Analysis and Discussion.
I'm feeling a bit off-put by the work I have right now but I'll just have to submit and work around it for my Final Dissertation later.
4. FINAL
File 4.1 Draft Dissertation (Final) [PDF].
Link to Google Drive View: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1s43JhRK2EfhI34nx5v24fyduZ--UTkYt/view?usp=sharing
5. REFLECTION
In general, academic writing assignments aren't really a favourite of mine. Research Methodology itself hit me pretty hard with the workload and writing so moving from that to writing my Draft Dissertation, it definitely felt familiar but not in a good way. The topic itself was also a big "Hmm..." for me because I was previously stumped on it during Methodology and it wasn't too different to here as well. But thankfully I did get a slightly better understanding of my research after drafting it up.
One thing for sure though is that I should definitely gauge my own motivation and ambition in the future because I think I was quite ambitious in trying to fit in an additional Visual Analysis to conduct whilst working on the Dissertation. I'm happy I did do the VA but it took so much time and my energy that the rest of my work definitely got affected in terms of quality because of it.
Overall, I think I'll definitely focus on trying to revise the draft for the Final Dissertation and hopefully my anxiety gets a bit better for the following assignments เดฆ്เดฆി ༎ຶ‿༎ຶ )
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