Project Evaluation

The projects in BA7 consisted of a research document, consisting of research into my Studio project, and a research report, a 1500 word report on a chosen subject. In these projects I learned to communicate my ideas effectively and academically, and conducted research into my chosen subjects with depth. For the BA7 research document, I pooled all of my knowledge together to successfully research into films, games, artists, and techniques and art styles. For the research report, I used my knowledge of academic writing to create a 1500 word document written on Osamu Tezuka. I used an extensive amount of books to conduct research into his life and works, and successfully gathered a large amount of information and sources.

My research report was based solely on Osamu Tezuka, his life and his work. Also known as 'The God of Manga', Tezuka transformed manga to this day, and I used research to examine what remains of his legacy in manga today. I was extremely happy with my initial research into the subject, compiling a list of books, studying each and noting down all the important information. Having a solid bibliography of books, I began writing my introduction and first chapter, and then having short summarised chapters. After some feedback I had realised that I had not answered my question in my first draft so I had to add some more information. After concluding my essay, if I have had more time I would have shorted my first chapter much more to give myself more room to answer my question successfully, of what is left of his legacy.

The research document for BA7 required a lot of time management and planning. I began the project with a joint idea for a game with Liam Gallagher-Vaes. This then transformed into a list of research areas which would aid me in my project. I began by studying films and games that I felt would be most inspirational and influential to my work. This led me through the Studio Ghibli films and the Walt Disney films, finding myself drawn to the idea of merging two styles together. When I began to research games, I found quite a few examples of games with a similar style to my own, and using these to influence gameplay ideas, and narrative ideas, as well as my character and environment design. Because of my love and interest in the Japanese manga and animation and the American animation, I decided to look into the most famous of each, Osamu Tezuka and Walt Disney. Through my research report, I had already gained extensive knowledge on Osamu Tezuka, so using this I compiled a short summary of his work and also reference images to influence my art style. Looking at Walt Disney’s work was also very inspiring, as his small sketches of characters can influence me greatly in the design of my own unique characters. From this I also studied Victorian period artists, which gave me an idea of clothing and art techniques used by artists of this era. To finish my document, I compiled a few pages of techniques and programs to use in BA8, also looking closely at the techniques used by Studio Ghibli and Disney to create a watercolour look to their films. Overall, I am very happy with the outcome of my document, I feel it will strongly support my artwork and will be useful with referencing. If I had more time, I would have conducted much more research into the design of my characters, looking at animals especially.