Class Exercise: Research

Name something you have researched in the past for art, design or media.

For my final project I have researched an animator called Dermot O'Connor. 

Explain how you researched this. 

I looked at the artist's website angryanimator.com, artist's Linkedin account on the Linkedin platform and found an interview with the artist on the Toon Boom Animation website. I found on his Linkedin that he has worked in the Disney Interactive Studios, therefore I have not found much valuable information, that would add important information on that, so I have not really used any of that. Most of the information I used is from the artist's website and can be found in the tab "21 foundations of animation". The same information can be found on courses created by this artist on Linkedin Learning or Lynda. 

What facts did you discover?

• Dermot O'Connor prefers to work on projects that would develop him as an animator, rather than work for studios. 
• He was a lead director for the animation in Disney's "Where's my water?" mobile game.
• He animated many CD-ROM games for Disney Interactive back in the 90s.
• Dermot O'Connor created the animation for Alan Parsons' music video for "As Lights Fall" (click here to see the video)
• Dermot O'Connor took 7 years to develop a film called "There's no tomorrow", but the animation production time took only 3 years, the rest was research. (click here to see the film)

What new conclusions did you establish?

I have reminded myself about the main points and basic principles about creating cartoon characters. These are things I knew about before, but I believe it is important to keep them in mind and for example, I would have forgotten to create a model sheet, but after the research I will remember to do it for all my characters. Another thing that I took away from this research, apart from the character building techniques, is to always set achievable goals. Dermot O'Connor says it is a common mistake of young animators, to have unachievable ideas and then they struggle with completing the projects. I think it is an important lesson to take away.

Research into my major project

My major project is a hand-drawn animation, that I will draw frame by frame. I am choosing this type of animation, because it is a classical method of creating an animation. I will do a more in-depth research on animation historically. I think the art of animation is really beautiful, and I find hand-drawn animations, extremely impressive, because I know how time-consuming they are. I am going to do a further research on flip books and how hand-drawn animations really started. 

After doing my flip book research, I am going to focus on early Disney creations. Disney is my biggest inspiration and it is why, I find his first works so important for me. I may look into books, the library has to offer, I have already seen some interesting books about Disney there, such as "Disney's art of animation" by Bob Thomas or "The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation" by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston. I think these would be great resources for my research on Disney basic animation and that could help me develop my animation and gain skills useful for me as an animator. 

I have already researched Dermot O'Connor and I have some more artists I would like to research, such as Stephanie Alexander. Researching animators is very helpful for me in the process of creating my animation, therefore I am going to continue doing that. 

Research through my major project

For my major project, I have already experimented with the software (click here to access the first post and click here to access part 2) I want to use, which is OpenToonz. I have compared it to Blender and justified why I decided to use OpenToonz (click here to access the post). I am going to export all the files through IMovie, because it is a source that I can easily access. 

Before actually animating, I do need to create a storyboard and I am either going to do that using pen and paper or using my IPad and an app called Procreate. I think I would actually like to have the storyboard on paper in front of me at all times, so it would be best achieved if I drew it by hand. 

For the animating process, I am going to be using my MacBook Air and a Wacom graphing tablet. 

Research for my major project

For the storyline of my animation, I am going to look more in-depth into the concept of breed discrimination and how it has been portrayed in art so far. I am going to base my research on the ordinances from places that had enacted breed specific legislations, like for example Overland Park, KS, that I have already mentioned. 

I am also going to research the basic meaning of discrimination and how it has been shown in culture, like photography and videos.