Research Report Draft Bullet Points

Red text is what I am not sure about and have to ask a tutor. 
(1,050 words in this bullet point draft)


INTRO:
Topic, issue or contention:Deforestation and it's effects on wildlife and their habitat.

Purpose, aim, objective, significance:

• Purpose, aim, objective: To make people empathize with the wildlife whose habitats are getting destroyed and how it can hurt or kill the animals. Inform the audience of how to avoid contributing to the problem.
• Significance: Make people think about animals before their consumption habits. If we don't change our ways some animals could become endangered or extinct (link to orangutans near extinction problem).

Theory: ...

Method: Research, thumb nailing, digital art making (modeling, sculpting, texturing, lighting, rendering, compositing a final continuous narrative) and hand made bookmaking.

Design Research informing the intention and direction: Continuous narrative research from pre-renaissance, story boarding -> continuous narrative

BODY:
Reflects on the strategy developed in response to the topic, issue and applied to resolving the aims and objectives:

• Research: Took a while to figure out my direction because I didn't write a proposal. I knew I wanted to create a forest environment for my character from my Digital Media paper. I was originally going to do my project on dogs vs wildlife but my palm oil deforestation research influenced my change as I was more interested in it and felt it was more environmentally important. 
• Planning what to create from just a narrative to a booklet also: I felt like a final digital art piece wasn't enough/clear enough to inform my audience on how to make changes. I was thinking about having a 'proposal' or explanation booklet to go with my narrative. But after talking to tutors about it they thought it was to obvious. I created a handmade book > inside introduction to my creature species (encyclopedia type format) which also lightly introduces deforestation and how we can stop its devastating effects. 

Reflects on the methods used to implement the strategy: 

• Planning story / Thumb nailing: It was originally hard to come up with story lines. I realised it was better to come up with a very simple, straight to the point story. This was made more simple by thumb nailing different storys in three parts and once those were narrowed down then thumb nailed again more fleshed out with 4-5 sections of the story. Though many variations of thumb nailing and feedback from fellow students and tutors, I finalised my final composition.
• Digital Making Process: Used Maya, Zbrush and Photoshop to create my final composition. This narrative was used to visualise my ideas to my audience.
• Handmade Book: I decided to make a booklet to go with my narrative as a more obvious way to get my ideas and message across to audience. I started my bookmaking process by researching different kinds of hand made book tutorials and made my own mock ups. I wanted my book to subtly get my ideas of deforestation. My book contains a rough encyclopedic type format of my own made up creature and bought in the topic of its dangers (deforestation). Making the finalised booklet, I used brown paper and very basic "forest" materials. This was to link it closer to my forest themes and environment. 

Explains how the methods were linked to the aims and objectives:

• Planning: Making sure my ideas and themes would be communicated in a way that is interesting to my audience and makes them think and feel empathy towards the wildlife effected my deforestation. 
• Digital Art making: I used a character I designed and sculpted to portray the wildlife creatures that are effected by deforestation. I used 3D design means to create my narrative as that is not only my discipline but I feel creating a realistic as possible scene would be a major contributor to my communicating my ideas as they are realistic. 
• Handmade Booklet: Made to inform the audience of my character species information and the dangers it faces of deforestation. To inform my audience the ideas/themes and inform them how to stop contributing to the problem via less paper/wood consumption, vegetarian diet etc

Reflects on how the project developed in response to first showing, EX-CHANGE and supercrit feedback:

First Show:

• Final Output: Originally my project was going to be a single final still but I was told to consider a different format and create more work -one single wasn't enough (eg storyboard, five frames, a few GIFs, animated stills etc)
• Style: I wanted to make my environment an exact replica of NZ forests but was told to consider a more fantasy approach as my character is fantasy. 
• Topic: I was told to really consider sticking to my dog vs wildlife theme approach instead of deforestation as this is a huge NZ problem with the endangered Kiwi. 

EX-CHANGE:

Supercrit: 

• Composition: Finalise composition with a camera run though in Maya over thumb nailing and traditional drawing.
• Consider your final booklet to be a pop up book.

Reflects on the challenges encountered in the design process:

• Story line: Struggled to come up with a story that was provoking and communicated my ideas simply.
• Output: Finalizing my final output for my digital art (3 tutors said different things)
• Book: Figuring out what goes into my booklet and why
• Technical Ability: UV mapping and Pipeline: I wanted to improve my skills in Maya. Pipeline: I had to adapt my pipleline to different models and visual effects. 
• Time management

Reflects on how the project responds to the concept of Whakatinana:

CONCLUSION:

Evaluate the outcome as meeting the stated objectives:

• I feel my work has been successful in my stated objectives. It creates empathy and an understanding of deforestation and its effects on wildlife. Is visually engaging to gain people's attention and keep it while also teaching them
• Informs audience of the issue, how to stop contributing to it and how to create a positive change

State how you have developed as a designer:

• Improved skills in informative storytelling (thumb nailing, planning and final 3D execution of final narrative)
• Improved Technical Ability: Improved skills in Maya, Zbrush and Photoshop (UV mapping, layers, lighting & rendering, image compositing in PH)
• Learning how to write a suitable text to go with my narrative that is engaging and informative
• Learnt how to make books by hand

Speculative future directions: 

• Create a series of works in the same format of human actions and their effects on animals (from the meat and diary industry to dog racing) with the aim of creating empathy among humans towards animals.