My extended essay is complete!

Wrapping up my contextual studies work


I have completely finished my contextual studies extended essay! I am really pleased that it is all finished now, alongside my CS blog, and now I don't have to worry about it any more. To be brutally honest I didn't really struggle with writing my research report this term, I actually found it quite easy and I got it done in good time. I think it's because I really like the topic I was writing about and have a personal interest in it so it didn't really feel tough to write, I actually quite enjoyed it. I just hope that that showed in my writing. I have made all the changes that my tutors had suggested to me and even got a little bit of extra feedback from Marie-Claire on the 18th after I emailed her which was fantastic so now everything is officially completed and I can now just get on with my studio work and mini briefs.

Final feedback on my extended essay

Making a couple of changes and finishing everything



On Wednesday the 16th I popped into university to speak to my tutor, Marie-Claire about my extended essay just to get some final feedback on what I have written before we break up for the Christmas holidays. I was expecting to get a lot of critical feedback about needing to change the actual written content of my essay but I was thrilled to hear that what I had written was apparently perfect and that the only changes that were given to me were things to do with the actual layout of my essay. It was honestly so nice to hear from my tutor that my essay was at a good quality and that all I needed to do was a little tweaking, it made my feel really confident about my work and that my essay was now essentially done and out of the way,  after I had completed my final edits of course. The few changes that both Marie-Claire and our new tutor Merlin have asked me to do I have listed below.

• Make images central 
• Add full chapter titles 
• Add figure numbers to the image text 
• Finish the bibliography 
• Try out different fonts 
• Fiddle about with spacing 
• Swap the Mario image out for an actual screenshot of the game 
• Read of my essay to find any spelling or grammar mistakes

So now that I have a list of changes that I need to complete before we go away for the winter break all I need to do is sort out the layout of my extended essay, get a few people to read over my essay for a few grammar and spelling checks and then everything will be finished which is great.

My table of illustrations

The images I put into my essay 



So now that my extended essay is completed for now I thought I should just post the images I used in my research report below along with my table of illustrations so that I have all my image sources in a blog post. As I have mentioned before the formatting goes incredibly strange when I try to transfer from word to blogger which is why the text is so big and the spaces look a little odd but it will have to do. So below are all the pictures I used to illustrate my essay along with were I found them.

• ·         Figure 1: ‘Humorous Phases of Funny Faces’ (J. Stuart Blackton 2006) [Internet] Available at: <http://www.2020-movie-reviews.com/reviews-year/1906-movie-reviews/humorous-phases-funny-faces-1906-movie-review/>  [Accessed December 2015] 

• ·         Figure 2: ‘The Adventures of Andre and Wally B’ (The Graphics Group and Lucasfilm 1984) [Internet] Available at: <http://blogs.disney.com/oh-my-disney/2013/10/21/what-your-favorite-pixar-short-says-about-you/> [Accessed December 2015] 

• ·         Figure 3: ‘Snow White and the seven dwarves’ (Walt Disney Animation Studios 1932) [Internet] Available at: <https://satinahall.wordpress.com/2015/02/20/disney-reviews-snow-white-and-the-seven-dwarfs-1937/> [Accessed December 2015]  

• ·         Figure 4:  ‘Toy Story’ (Walt Disney Animation Studios and Pixar 1995) [Internet] Available from: <https://animationfascination.wordpress.com/2013/11/22/a-fascinating-day-in-animation-history-pixars-toy-story-1995/> [Accessed December 2015] 

• ·         Figure 5: ‘Paperman’ (Walt Disney Animation Studios 2012) [Internet] Available from: < http://www.disneyanimation.com/projects/paperman> [Accessed December 2015] 

• ·         Figure 6: ‘The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius ( Paramount Pictures 2001) [Internet] Available from: <http://jimmyneutron.wikia.com/wiki/File:Cast-of-the-adventures-of-jimmy-neutron-boy-genius-5.jpg> [Accessed December 2015] 

• ·         Figure 7: ‘Code Lyoko’ (Tania Palumbo and Thomas Romain 2003) [Internet] Available from: <http://en.codelyoko.fr/revuepresse.cl> [Accessed December 2015] 

• ·         Figure 8: ‘Miraculous Ladybug’ (Thomas Astruc 2015) [Internet] Available from: <https://www.pinterest.com/birthdaycandel/the-miraculous-ladybug/> [Accessed December 2015] 

• ·         Figure 9: Photograph of Hayao Miyazaki [Internet] Available at: <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/10816014/Hayao-Miyazaki-interview-I-think-the-peaceful-time-that-we-are-living-in-is-coming-to-an-end.html> [Accessed December 2015] 

• ·         Figure 10: ‘Spirited Away’ (Studio Ghibli 2010) [Internet] Available from: <http://www.cineman.pl/filmy/Filmy,Kino-familijne,Anime/Spirited-Away-W-krainie-bogow> [Accessed December 2015] 

• ·         Figure 11: ‘Haikyuu!!’ (Production I.G 2014) [Internet] Available from: <http://myanimelist.net/anime/20583/Haikyuu!!> [Accessed December 2015] 

• ·         Figure 12: ‘Tennis for two’ (William Higinbotham 1958) [Internet] Available from:         < https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennis_for_Two> [Accessed December 2015]      

• ·         Figure 12: ‘The Witcher 3’ (CD Projekt 2015) [Internet] Available from: <https://www.vg247.com/2015/04/30/new-the-witcher-3-screenshots-show-combat-exploration-and-general-carousing/> [Accessed December 2015] 

• ·         Figure 13: Image of ‘Sonic the Hedgehog’ from 1991 to 2015 (SEGA) [Internet] Available from: http://itshelias94.deviantart.com/art/Sonic-The-Hedgehog-357474492> and <https://www.tes.com/lessons/m4CkpX8R-x4qxg/3rd-grade-roman-mosaic?redirect-bs=1> [Accessed December 2015] 

• ·         Figure 14: ‘Paper Mario’ (Nintendo 2000) [Internet] Available from: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_Mario> [Accessed December 2015] 

Getting my extended essay finished

The final draft is complete and now pending feedback



After receiving some really helpful feedback from our new tutor Merlin about how my 1,000 word essay draft was looking so far and how I could possibly improve it, as well as completely all my necessary research, I decided that I should just dedicate a few days to my contextual studies and focus on getting my essay completed. I knew that we had drop session coming up on the 16th of December and I really wanted to get a little more feedback on my essay before we headed away for the Christmas break and I though, If I had it completely finished by then and handed it in a few days before hand, I could get some feedback on the whole thing, not just a extra few hundred words or so. So I decided just to knuckle down and get it written.

I am really happy to say that I managed to complete my essay this evening, bibliography and all, which is the set date that I wanted it done by so I am really proud that I was able to do that seeing as I have been quite stressed over getting my work done and was a little anxious that I wouldn't get it finished in time for feedback. But it is all complete, up to the standard I wanted it at with everything finished like the table of illustrations and layout and I was able to get all my quotes and points in that I wanted to talk about in so I am really pleased about that. Now all I need to do is wait for some feedback and see if I need to make any changes before I go away for Christmas. I still want my essay to be completely done and out of the way before the holidays as I have enough work to do when I am at home and I really don't want any more.

As I said before I would usually post my essay down below but as this is my final research report I think it is best not to put it out there on the internet so I have decided just to write about it instead which is why It doesn't look like there is much in this post. So now I just need to keep getting on with my mini briefs and studio work project until I get some proper feedback on the 16th.

More further research

Picking up some books from the Library 


After completing my internet research and I was starting to think about what I needed to write about next in my extended essay I decided that I should pop to the universities library in order to grab a few books which I could looks through for some research as I only have a couple of books on my bibliography so far and I felt like I needed a couple more. The library always has a really good selection of books to look at for research and I was tempted to grab a lot more than I did but I wouldn't of physically been able to carry them home so I decided to limit myself to a couple of animation and video game books which I could look at. I have put my completed bibliography of my book research for my research report, a couple of these are my own and the rest are from the library and all in all they were really useful to read through.




Bibliography of books

• Ashcraft, B., Snow, J., (2008) Arcade Mania! The turbo-charged world of Japan’s game centres. Japan: Kodansha International

• Beck, J., (2004) Animation Art. From pencil to pixel. The illustrated History or Cartoon, Anime, CGI. London: Flame Tree Publishing.

•  Donovan, T., (2010) Replay. The history of video games. East Sussex: Yellow Ant.

• Ferrari, D., Traini, L., (2011) Art and Videogames Neoludica. Italy: Skira Editore S.p.A.

• McCarthy, H., (1996) The anime movie guide. London: Titan Books.

• Melissinos, C., O’Rourke, P., (2012) The art of video games. From Pac-man to Mass Effect. New York: Welcome Books.

•  Oniki, Y., Sahara, H., Searleman, E., (2004) The art of Howl’s Moving Castle. Japan: Studio Ghibli Inc. 

• Thomas, B., (1991) Disney’s Art of Animation. From Mickey Mouse to Beauty and the Beast. New York: Welcome Enterprises.

Handing in a draft

1,000 word introduction and abstract completed


So over the past couple of weeks I have been working away at my studio work project along side the the mini briefs we have been given so I have been trying to balance everything to make sure I had enough free time to work on the research report draft that needs to be submitted. I do feel like we have been given a little too much extra work to do on top of all our proper course work which is a irritating as I am struggling a bit to try and get everything done but thankfully I managed to find enough time to get this draft done which is really important in comparison to everything else. Usually I would just post my research report draft below but now we are getting a little closer to when things need to start getting finalised I feel a little uncomfortable about posting my written work online so from this point on I will simply write about it instead so my blog posts won't have as much content as they usually do.

So for my draft I wanted to make sure I got at least 1,000 words written and completed up to a finished sort of standard of writing so that I would be able to get some good and helpful feedback that would hopefully guide me in the right direction. Unfortunately I didn't manage to find enough time to write as much as I had planned, however, I did get both my abstract and my introduction done which came to around 1,320 words which is a good amount of writing to get some feedback from. I was able to talk about development and increase of electronic technology and how that has influenced the animation industry as well as adding in a couple of the quotes I found. Hopefully this should be a good start for me and once I get my feedback from my tutor I will be able to go ahead and write some more but at the moment I just have to play the waiting game.

Doing some more research for my essay

Picking out some usable quotes



Now that I have completed my internet research and written up a more up to date draft I decided it would be a good idea for me to go through the websites and videos I had looked at to find all the quotes that I think would work well in my essay and that I would like to use. This took me a little while as there were an awful lot I could choose from but obviously I did manage to narrow it down to the selection I have posted below. I feel pleased that I now have a good selection that I can choose from when I actually get down to writing my research report properly as some of them are pretty strong statements that I think will work well with what I am investigating. I have tried to get a few that relate to each of my chapters so that they are spread easily throughout my report and then I will just need to choose a handful that overall come under 750 words which I am confident I will be able to do.

On a side note due to their being editing issues when I try and important in text from Microsoft word I have simply decided to just stick to the method of screenshotting the pages and dropping them like I have previously as it is so much simpler then trying to fix the multitude or errors that copying and pasting causes.

My second draft

Adding more structure to my research report 



So after my feedback from my previous research report sessions with the rest of my fellow students which was really helpful to hear as everyone had some really interesting opinions on what I was planning to write and overall thought it was a good idea, my tutor suggested that next week I should come back in with another draft that has a little more structure to it so slowly, bit by bit, I could work my draft up until it reaches the final thing. So I did what Marie Claire suggested and added a few things to my draft such as a contents page that lists all of the chapters I am planning to include in my research report as well as a bibliography of the research I have looked at so far so that she could see where I am with that and if I need to do any more. I added to my bibliography a couple of books that I owned that I had looked at previously since my research post so that I had a relevant mixture of both internet and book references. So now that I have completed this I just need to wait for a little more feedback whilst I continue working on my studio work and then go from there.

My first draft

Writing the basic structure of my research report 



So when we last spoke to our tutor, Marie Claire, in our sessions about our research reports we were told that we would need to write about a very brief draft of what we are planning to write about in essays and bring them into the next lesson so that we would be able to go over our ideas with our fellow students as well as getting some feedback from our tutor. Thankfully I had done plenty of research so I pretty much knew exactly what areas I wanted to cover and it was just a case of me sorting out all my content into different paragraphs. I have popped the draft I have made below which addresses all the different topics I would like to discuss for each section such as film and video games and now all I need to do is read it to the class and get some feedback.

Completing some internet research

A list of websites I have been looking at 


For the past couple of weeks I have been focusing mainly on my studio work project as I had to get quite a bit to get done in a short space of time such as trying to figure out what my actual idea that I want to work on all year is going to be, along side the new mini briefs we have been given and creating my learning agreement, it has been quite chaotic. Hopefully I will be able to balance my studio work and CS work a little better in the future but with all these extra mini briefs we have been giving that is starting to look tricky. However finally I have been able to dedicate some time to getting my initial contextual studies research done which I have been really eager to do as I really interested in the topic I have decided to talk about. 

There are a few key areas in my research report that I would like to be able to focus on and hopefully fit into 5,000 words which I think would be able to give good structure to what I am writing about as well as touching on quite a few areas of the 2D vs 3D debate. Obviously I could have gone a bit mad with this topic and picked out every single area of the media that is in the midst of this 2D and 3D animation controversy however, this would have turned my essay into something way past the 10,000 word option and so I decided to keep it short and sweet and made a little list of the area that I thought would give my essay the most impact. 

• The history of Animation 
• Animation in film
• Animation in television 
• Animation in Anime 
• Animation in Video Games  

For each area I was thinking off writing about in my essay I have some basic knowledge of already, hence why I decided to pick them, but I knew it was also important for me to do some further research as well to make sure they were definitely worth writing about, that they head relevant information linking to the use of both 2D and 3D animation and that each topic would work nicely together. So as soon as I knew the areas that I wanted to be focusing on I got to looking up some web articles on each topic to try and get some solid research behind that I had planned to write about so far and to see if I could find any good quotes. All the webpages I have looked at and videos I have watched I have put below, obviously I will not be writing about everything I have looked at so far but it is good to have a few options to go through.




Internet articles and videos

• http://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/mar/07/disney-hand-drawn-animation
• http://www.timeout.com/london/film/pixar-director-john-lasseter-on-the-future-of-animation-1
• http://www.digitalartsonline.co.uk/features/creative-lifestyle/turf-war-is-2d-animation-dying/
• http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/disney-veterans-to-save-dying-art-of-2d-hand-drawn-animation-with-new-film-hullabaloo-9710694.html
• http://chrisoatley.com/making-of-paperman/
• http://nintendoeverything.com/lords-of-shadow-producer-believes-the-days-of-2d-castlevania-games-are-gone/
• http://www.gamesradar.com/interview-john-lasseter/
• http://www.animatorisland.com/why-2d-animation-should-be-abandoned-part-1/
• http://2dwillneverdie.com/intro/
• http://www.cartoonbrew.com/cgi/a-little-more-about-disneys-paperman-63782.html
• http://www.buzzfeed.com/josephbernstein/the-death-of-the-3d-platformer#.preJNPodK
• http://the-artifice.com/animation-in-video-game-generation-tradition-vs-technology/
• http://www.theaggie.org/2011/03/31/2d-animation-is-not-dead-say-animators/
• https://www.nintendo.co.uk/Iwata-Asks/Iwata-Asks-SUPER-MARIO-3D-LAND/Vol-1-SUPER-MARIO-3D-LAND/2-A-Missing-Link-Between-2D-and-3D-Mario/2-A-Missing-Link-Between-2D-and-3D-Mario-216918.html
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Paper_Mario
• http://www.rotoscopers.com/2014/09/01/disney-veterans-gather-to-save-2d-animation-from-extinction-with-hullabaloo/
• http://moviepilot.com/posts/2482678?lt_source=external%2Cmanual
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miraculous_Ladybug
• http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Trivia/MiraculousLadybug
• http://miraculeusecoccinelle.tumblr.com/post/122444887956/2danime-miraculous-ladybug-may-depend-on-the
• http://www.pgsentertainment.com/property/11/miraculous/
• http://forums.animesuki.com/archive/index.php/t-112862.html
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_Lyoko
• http://www.slashfilm.com/disneys-return-to-2d-animation-the-prince-and-the-frog-teaser-trailer/
• http://www.theverge.com/2014/3/20/5522320/final-fight-can-japans-gaming-industry-be-saved
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Princess_and_the_Frog
• http://www.1up.com/features/japanese-games-breaking-west
• http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/animation.html
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_animation
• http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/WesternAnimation/CodeLyoko
• https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/4263.Hayao_Miyazaki
• http://www.awn.com/animationworld/the-hayao-miyazaki-interview
• http://www.denofgeek.com/movies/studio-ghibli/37209/studio-ghibli-its-final-films-the-future-of-2d-animation
• https://awsomesauce.wordpress.com/2011/04/28/what-about-the-future-of-2d-animation/
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayao_Miyazaki
• http://www.rogerebert.com/interviews/hayao-miyazaki-interview
• http://www.nausicaa.net/miyazaki/interviews/sen.html
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirited_Away
• http://quimbyco.net/2d-animation-dead/
• http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/698539fe-2974-11da-8a5e-00000e2511c8.html
• http://www.cartoonbrew.com/award-season-focus/tomm-moore-on-song-of-the-sea-reinventing-2d-and-dodging-the-studio-system-107389.html
• http://pixar.wikia.com/wiki/John_Lasseter
• https://www.bnl.gov/about/history/firstvideo.php
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_Mario
• http://blog.digitaltutors.com/80s-now-evolution-animation-video-games/

This a combination of the little bits of research I did over the summer as well as a big chunk I have done over the last couple of days and reading through each web page and watching each videos, I feel a lot more confident in the topic I want to talk about as I feel this research has given me some really good structure and support to my writing and I will be able to make a good essay out of it. Whether or not I can get it all in under 5,000 words we will see however, I can always cut bits out where I think it's necessary. I think this is more than a enough research for the amount I am meant to be writing if I am honest however I do still need to grab a few books from the library at some point so that my research isn't all internet based and to see if I can find any new information. Apart from that I am very happy now to just  begin getting a rough plan down of what my research report structure is going to be as well as continuing with my studio work. 

The new updated brief

What will be expected of us this year 


So recently we just had our first lecture back of the new university term which was essentially a welcome back by our tutors which was a little bit of a refresh for us all when it came to what we would need to be producing this year and what exactly we needed to start working with right off that bat. Along with this came brand new up to date briefs for both our contextual studies and studio work assignments which was fantastic to see as the last ones we got were very basic. These told us everything we would need to know about our work load, what needed to be done, and how it would be presented for submission. Admittedly it was a little intimidating to see such a big work load given to us right when we got back but with it being spread out over the space of a year I hope that it will all be achievable. So below I have just posted what our brief is for this years studio work, which is a lot more in-depth from the one I last posted, as it is easier for me to refer back to it like this. There are quite a few pages to read through but once I have done that I will hopefully be more on track with what I need to start working on and can get some stuff done.

Research Report work from June 2015

My extended essay proposal from last term


So before the summer break we were all told to think about what we would possibly want to write for our dissertation in the third year and that it was important for us to start thinking about it early on so that we would have a head start when it come to looking into our chosen topic. I completely forgot to make any blog posts at the time we were told about this as I was a little stressed due to the amount of work that I had to get done for BA6 so I have decided to post about it now before I get onto talking about third year. So below I have put the research report brief that we were given in June by our tutor Sharon as it gives a good guideline as to what we need to be thinking about when it comes to our writing and it is easier for me to refer back to if it was on my blog. There a few basic guidelines on here to get us heading in the right direction and to let us know what we will be expected to work on throughout third year which all sounds very achievable.

As well as this reading through our brief we were told to also make a proposal as to what we were planning on writing about for our research report so we could have some feedback before we all headed off for summer break so we knew that what we were planning to talk about would be acceptable. We were also told that in some way it should link to what we were going to produce for our studio work as well so that both of our project would work nicely together. I already knew that I wanted to be focusing on 2D art for my studio project and so I decided to focus my idea on that and pick something that I would want to talk about. The area I chose to write about was the 2D vs 3D debate which has become quite a controversial topic now as I knew I could get a lot out of it as well as it being something that I have a personal interest in so I decided to go with that. I made a proposal document, which I have posted below, that I handed in and showed Sharon and thankfully I got the thumbs up and was told that I could continue with this essay topic as it is one that has a lot of potential which was fantastic to hear.

So now that it is after the summer holidays and I have had a little look into the topic that I want to be writing about for my research report, now is the time to start getting some proper research done which I can put onto my blog and begin planning out exactly what topic I am going to be writing about. I have a few good guidelines to go off of from my essay so now I just need to knuckle down and get it done so that I can get some more feedback from my tutors when I next see them.