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1. Research
Ewan Wild

2. Existing Product – Cuphead and Classic
Cartoon Styles
This Disney-style animation is a very early type of
animation, dating back to the 1930s. This hand drawn
animation was made by groups of people, frame by
frame until a finished cartoon was finally made. The
reason I make the addition of Cuphead is because it has
the combination of computers as well drawing. It starts
off by drawing the characters, then once this is done, it
adds the colour and it animates it on different computer
programs. The animator starts, drawing the base outline
of a character, starting with the more simplistic parts of
a character and gradually adding more detail. Once this
is done, it goes to the inking and clean-up person. Their
job is to go over the drawing in pen, making the lines
clear, and filling in any parts that need to be filled in
with black. Finally, it goes to the digital painter who adds
the colour before it is animated.
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3. Existing Product – Father and Daughter
Image:
Father and Daughter is a short film made by Michael
Dudok de Wit. It took the Academy Award for best short
film in 2001. It’s about the story of a girl who watched
her father row out to sea and never come back. She
keeps going to the place he left but she never finds him.
The animation style of this film is interesting. There’s no
detail on the face or body, the characters are almost all
silhouettes. I think that this creates a darker mood
throughout the film, if the faces don’t portray emotion,
everything else does, down to the use of mise-en-scene
from the colossal shadows of the trees which rise high
above the characters which tells us about the sad, darker
world the girl is in with her father gone. The basic style
however doesn’t hide the grief the daughter feels, as the
passage of time that’s shown throughout the film
perfectly shows the grief she feels all these years later,
from being a child to an old woman.
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4. Existing Product – Father and Daughter
Music:
The use of music (by Normand Roger and Denis L.
Chartrand) in this short film is very interesting too. It’s as
if the music acts as a polar opposite to the story. It seems
more uplifting in comparison to the actual story. I think it
does this to portray hope where the visuals don’t. The
film shows us the girl going back constantly, waiting for
her father to return. The image shows her as upset,
almost depressed that her father never returned,
however the music represents the little hope she has left
that he might actually come home. This music was
mostly composed in 1880 by Ion Ivanovici, called Waves
of the Danbune. The classical Romanian piece was
adapted slightly with different variations to make the
final score that was perfect for this film. My original idea
was to have the music show the emotions my character
is feeling, however from this short film, I can make the
music show a conflicting feeling to the one shown
through the characters.
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5. Existing Product – Father and Daughter
The Making Of:
Father and Daughter was made in a combination of
drawing and computers over the course of eight years.
Each shot was drawn by hand in pencil or charcoal,
which is how most of the smoky images were created
(like the clouds in the bottom photo). The use of
shadows and how the ‘light’ perfectly hits everything is
even more amazing when finding out it was done by
hand. Once they were finished, each image was
scanned onto a computer, and the colours were added
digitally. Because each shot was scanned in, this film
could almost be classed as stop motion like mine will
be. It is similar in the way it’s done to mine except I
have an extra step, I am drawing on the computer, then
printing and taking photographs of each shot, before
adding it back to the computer again.
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6. Existing Product - Who’s Hungry?
Image:
‘Who’s Hungry?’ by David Ochs is a horrific short film
that’s been described as “twisted” and “torrid”. It is a
different take on the story of Hansel and Gretel,
following two kids who have been kidnapped after
being tricked and lured into an Ice Cream Van and
taken back to a man’s house. I really like the style,
which has a sketchy/cartoon look too it. The
sketching is very good at creating a dark, scary
atmosphere which makes the shadows even darker,
and the lights a dull grey. This is very important in the
man’s house as in film, darkness represents evil, and
in a film that’s all in black and white, it’s very
important that the limited colour you can work with
is used well. Size proportions are also important in
this as they are completely different. The children are
extremely tiny compared to the man, which makes
them seem even more defenseless and makes the
man seem like more of a scary monster.
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7. Existing Product - Who’s Hungry?
Sounds:
There is no music in ‘Who’s Hungry?’, but for a very good
reason. The lack of music actually seems to build more
tension than any other music would. It makes all the
sounds he uses instead seem all that more frightening.
The thud of the man as he hits the floor after being hit in
the head by a metal spike can send shivers down your
spine. These jumpy sound effects that replace the music
really bring a sense of realism to the film, a frightening
idea that perhaps it could happen in real life.
It’s creepy from the start, when they are kidnapped, all
we hear is the background with an ice-cream van tune in
the background. This goes on while the title is played.
The scary idea of a kidnapping backed by a cheerful
sound of an ice-cream van just gives the start of the film
a more tense and creepy beginning, and this doesn’t
stop throughout the film. It’s not easy to create so much
tension in an animated short film, however David Ochs
has managed it perfectly.
The Making Of:
This short film was apparently made
completely by hand. Every frame that’s shown
was drawn on paper and then put together on
the computer. I am not able to say how the
sound effects were created, however the
options are to make them by hand, or
download free to use ones online. I would
personally choose to make them myself,
however some sounds, such as crickets heard
towards the start, would be extremely difficult
to make alone.
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8. Existing Product – Film Posters
Different animated films follow the same idea when it comes to
posters. Each one is quite simple. The premise is that they each
show the main characters as well as the main scenery behind it.
From this poster of ‘Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse’ we see that
this pattern is followed. All the main spider-people are scattered
around the poster with the main character, Miles Morales, the
largest in the middle of the poster. Behind this we see the city
where the whole film takes place, New York. Underneath all this, is
the title. An important thing to notice is that Although the title is
large, the poster is still dominated by images. This is to make the
audience want to watch it as they look at the images to determine
whether or not they want to see the film. If the poster was just the
title, there wouldn’t be nearly as much interest in the film.
Notice how these other animated posters to the
right follow the same pattern. Main characters in
the middle, their surroundings similar to that in
the actual film, and the words large but not
taking up all the space on the poster.
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9. Research Analysis
• What common features do the researched
products have?
All of these animations follow a similar pattern. To make them perfect, they have to
use a combination of drawing and a computer. Some use the computer more than
others, but all of them use it. It is important to use it to improve little bits of the
animation, like making the black parts more black, or improving the outlines of
everything slightly. However they do use the technology differently. For example, in
‘Who’s Hungry?’, it was only used to add the sounds and put all the frames together,
whereas in the eight year project of ‘Father and Daughter’, it was also used to add all
the colour into each hand drawn frame. Each one also shows the style of the creator
and is all original. The classic Disney movies were something new, and the style is now
iconic in animation, as well as the other two show original thoughts towards their art,
they have come up with different that reflects them, rather than using a someone
else’s animation style.
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10. Research Analysis
• What aspects of the research will you include
within your own production work?
There’s a lot of areas that I want to take away from my research and add it to my own
animation. Firstly, I want to use a similar use of shading to what was used in ‘Who’s
Hungry?’. The shadows that he created in this animation were great to me, it really
added a level of creepiness to the whole surroundings, and added a lot of tension to
the whole short film just from this use of shading.
Another area I would add from my research is adopting a similar style to the one I
researched in ‘Father and Daughter’. The silhouette style is very intriguing to me, and
the fact that there’s no facial expressions, yet the characters still show so much
emotion. When creating mine, I will also do faceless type characters, but the
movements will be lifelike, keeping emotion in my animated film.
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11. Audience Research

12. Secondary Audience research
To see what people think of animated films, I went to IMDb to look at a variety of reviews.
Although not all in my target age range, it’s important to remember that all sorts of people
would watch animated films. From these reviews, I can see some positives and negatives
which I can then use to make mine better. For example, this positive review tells me the
music which matches a mood of what’s happening is very important as it can represent
emotions of faceless characters. On the other hand, this negative review says it made
them bored. This tells me that I should keep my animation quite fast paced and give a
variety of different scenes. Lots of backgrounds and adventures should keep things more
exciting as well as stopping people from thinking it was boring.
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13. Secondary Audience research
I next went onto an article ranking the top Disney
films. The reason I thought this might be useful is
because I can see whether the general public prefer
the older Disney films or the newer ones with a
more modern style. As you can see on the left, the
top two are both more modern ones, beauty and
the beast in 1991, and the lion king in 1994 (I count
the 90s films as modern in comparison to the age
and animation style of those in the 40s and earlier).
It isn’t until we reach third place when we see Snow
White and the Seven Dwarfs from 1937 that we get
to the old classic films. This tells me a lot about the
audience for animated films. For example, The Lion
King’s gross is around 100 million dollars more than
the others. This tells me that people like that sad
feeling when tragedy happens, before a happy
ending. It’s as though the audience want their
emotions played with through the death of a
character or in some other way.
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14. Secondary Audience research
s

15. Secondary Audience research
It’s all well and good looking for opinions from people about different animated films,
however I need to know who my audience is. According to YouGov, I have a specific
adult audience. Because only people who are over 18 can use give their opinions on
this website, a whole new audience for my film trailer has been born. From a 68%
positive opinion, my adult audience appears to be mostly female millennials. 77% of
females have a positive opinion towards women compared to only a 60% positive
opinion from from males. It also has a 76% positive opinion towards millennials, 10%
more than baby boomers and 14% more than generation X.
Disney have quite a large negative opinion compared to other film studies that don’t
make animated films, however. Disney has a 10% negative opinion, but another film
giant that does less animated films, Warner Bros, (shown at the bottom) has only a 3%
negative opinion. This makes me think that a lot of people don’t like animated films as
much as other brands.
Millennials born between 1982 – 1999, Generation X born between 1965 – 1981, Baby Boomers born between 1946 - 1964
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16. Primary Research – My Survey
Questions
As part of my primary research, I have created a survey for people ages eighteen and
under to complete. The questions are as follows:
After putting out the survey, I realised that for this, age isn’t important so I might be able to dismiss the
question. As I mentioned in my proposal with my target audience, my film is mostly tailored towards
women, therefore I will probably filter out their results to be separate to the male results.
p

17. Primary Audience research
p
From my survey, I got 42 answers. For my first answer
asking the gender of the participant, I found that 33
were male, 6 were female, and 3 preferred not to say.
I will start by analysing everyone's answers, however I
will more look into the answers given by females first,
considering that my target audience is females. Two
thirds of people in my survey answered that they
would watch a film with no words in. This is good for
me it was part of my original plan. However if people
didn’t want that, I’d be willing to have changed it. But
according to the survey, the majority would like that.
Next, I moved onto asking people whether or not
they would watch a film with no colour which was,
again, in my original plan. The reason I have added
these questions is because they are relevant to my
trailer, however I also wouldn’t mind changing it if
people taking the survey didn’t want it. But again, the
majority would watch a film with no colour, making it
so I can stick to my own idea.

18. Primary Audience research
p
The next question still went the way I wanted it to
go. Nearly 90% of people would watch a film that
looked hand drawn. This means that again, I can
still follow my actual idea. Drawing in different
styles is difficult, but I could have done it if I
needed to. That’s why I thought that I add that
question. The style is a very important part of a
film and if people don’t like it, they wouldn’t watch
it.
The genres question is where things get a bit tricky.
I didn’t go into the FMP thinking about making a
comedy, however it’s what the majority wants. A
lot of people want adventure too, so what I can do
is create both. My original idea was a girl going on
an adventure, if I stick to this idea, but add some
comedy in as well, I will be able to please nearly
everyone on the survey, making a win-win
scenario.

19. Primary Audience research
p
In my survey, I added one last question. It didn’t
have to be answered, but people who wanted to add
something extra could. I asked them what would
they like to see in this film. 27 of the 42 answered,
and most of those answers can be summed up with
these three. People say they want to see a good
story. This was the main point of my trailer, trying to
create a good story as well, rather than just a good
looking animation. However, creating a good story in
a trailer isn’t easy, I have such little time to create a
meaningful animation that I have created a difficult
challenge for myself during the four weeks of
production.
The answers that the females gave worked even better. Of the six females that took
part in my survey, five of them answered yes for all my questions, and then one
answered no. The majority (4/6) Also answered that they would rather see an
adventure film genre-wise. This is all useful to me as it shows that people, and my
target audience, would be interested in watching my idea for a film.

20. Primary Audience research
Name:
William Anderson
Age:
18
How often do you watch animations on film or TV?:
2-3 times a week
What do you think is important in an animated film?:
good characters and humour because that’s the type of stuff that makes people keep watching. A
famous character that’s a household name like Goku can take a show a long way.
Do you think music in a film is important? If so, why?:
Music is important for creating the right mood. If a scene is sad, it needs sad music which can create
or add a certain feeling to a scene
What do you look for in a film filled with adventure?:
I’d like to see interesting situations that haven’t been done before, like something goes wrong for
the character but in a different, creative way.
p

21. Primary Audience Research
I created an interview to complete in more detail and to do in person as an extra bit of
primary research. I interviewed someone who has a history with animation,
completing one himself and aiming to work in a career with it. In this interview I asked
him certain questions in how to create a good animation that shows meaning, and
what makes a good animation, as shown above.
The responses were useful to me as the answers were similar to the extra survey
question, it shows what people care about in a film like this, and helps me focus on
certain different areas.
It also confirmed what I thought about music, and how it is really important to the film
and to get right.
He has also mentioned the importance of original ideas in films as it is running
increasingly thin. Something new and original can go a long way to some people, as
people watching films tend to like things that they’ve never seen before.
p

22. Audience Research – Conclusion
Audience research was very useful to me. I learnt a lot from a lot of different people about
what they think makes a good adventure film. I have taken all the responses to heart and it
has changed what I will make accordingly.
From what I have discovered from both primary and secondary research, people are happy
with the basic idea of my film. However, I have learnt that people also get bored easily. To
counteract this, I should make an exciting trailer. It should be packed with tense situations
and run at a fast pace, that way people wouldn’t get bored and be kept on the edge of their
seats the whole time.
I have also learnt that a lot of people also think that correct music is important. Music can
add tension or show emotion in a way that a single character can’t, making it very
important to a scene that has to make the audience upset, or even happy at times.
Finally, I have learnt that one of the most important areas is the story. According to my
audience, a good story is one of the most important areas of the film. If the story is bad,
people wont be interested in anything else, no matter how nice it looks, or how good the
music is. The trailer that I am making is the perfect way to show a good story in a short
amount of time.
p

23. Subject Research

24. Subject Research – Stop Motion
Stop motion is an animating technique that dates back to 1897 with
the short film ‘The Humpty Dumpty Circus’ which saw animals and
acrobats come to life (the film is now lost). It has been used
consistently throughout the years since then, including many Oscar
nominations, most recently for Isle Of Dogs. Which was nominated
for best animated feature film, as well as best original score.
There are varieties of stop motion, cutout animation uses flat
materials, such as paper and/or other fabrics. It is also the type of
stop motion I will use.
Stereoscopic stop motion is a very rare type, used for a feature-
length film for the first time in 2009 for the film ‘Caroline’. It creates
a 3D style depth from 2d images using types of glass, such as those
from binoculars or a stereoscope.
The final type is go motion. This was used a lot in the 80s for films
such as ‘Empire Strikes Back’. It is when everything is done on a
computer, including the movements, to create an animation. It is
used to create a more realistic motion blurring effect.
Stop motion has certain pros compared to other forms of animation,
such as CGI. It is used a lot due to it’s lower production cost, as well
as the ability to be able to use real textures compared to the
artificially made ones that CGI gives us.
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25. Subject Research – Animation History
Animation has been around for hundreds of years, just in different
ways to what we might think. Creating shadows from paper and light
to create images on a wall can date back even to the 1700s in China.
Although we may not see this as animation today, many would argue
that it is a very early form of this. A very early form “was most likely
done in primitive shadowgraphy dating back to prehistory.”
Moving images were also projected on a magic lantern, which was
invented in 1659. In the 1700s, the glass of these lanterns were
painted, making different movements.
Kineographs, or flip-books, were very popular in mid-1800s. Springy
pages of movements created a moving image when flipped through,
which was very popular with children at the time.
In the early 1900s, Norman McLaren painted and scratched straight
onto film, creating early versions of colour animations, creating all the
images and sounds by scratch.
In the 1920s and 30s, Disney started to find popularity. Although
creating Mickey Mouse in the 20s, they went on to create Snow
White and The Seven Dwarfs in the 1937, which was considered to be
the first feature length animation.
Animation made its way onto TV in the 50s, with Crusader Rabbit in
1950, and was found to be especially popular when colour TVs came
out in 1954 with other colour cartoons such as Huckleberry Hound in
1958.
s

26. Subject Research – Animated
Adventure in Film and TV
Adventure is a fairly common genre in film and TV.
People enjoy looking at places they can’t go to
themselves, which I believe is one of the reasons why
adventure is popular. There’s one area in particular
which most adventure films follow that I should also
do to make mine interesting, and that’s to create
problems for my character. A straightforward
adventure is boring, but adding obstacles that she has
to overcome would draw in more viewers. For
example, the adventure cartoon from Netflix,
Disenchantment, has many obstacles for the
protagonist. She gets caught by guards, gets trapped
on the edges of cliffs, etc. and that makes the story a
lot more interesting. It also adds suspense and tension
in parts of the story, keeping the viewers on the edge
of their seats and creating a situation where they have
to know what happens.
s

27. Practical Research

28. Practical Research – Experiment 1
For my first part of practical research, I tried doing some stop motion with a chain. The
movements I did were very basic, however I am quite inexperienced with stop motion,
so I thought it would be better if I tried something simple to begin with. I took 148
photos and created a clip that was just over 5 seconds, which also gives me an idea of
the amount of photos I have to take for a full trailer. To create this short experiment, I
used a rostrum which had a camera attached to it, making photos that need to be
taken straight down easier (shown bottom left). Taking photos normally with the
camera like this might also seem quite difficult, so to counteract this, I got a trigger
(me using it on the bottom right). This trigger, when plugged in, will take the photos
when the button on it is pressed, making it much easier to to get photos taken. To take
all these images and put them onto my mac, it took around 45 minutes. This tells me
that creating a full trailer might take a while, however I am willing to put in the extra
work.
p

29. Practical Research – Experiment 1
results
To the left is two separate images from the final
result. One shows positives, and the other shows
the negatives. The top image was towards the start,
I was moving the chain well and a good, successful
piece was created. However later on I experimented
with zooming using the rostrum, and the image
below is the outcome. When zooming in I forgot to
focus it after every small bit of zoom, this made the
image blurry after too many pictures. This can be a
good thing though, because I did this in my first
experiment with stop motion, I know to focus the
image properly after every zoom when I go on to
complete my final piece. I also know that I am able
to do stop motion so I am going into production
feeling more confident about what I am doing.
p

30. Practical Research - Experiment 1
When all the photos were taken and uploaded onto my computer, I went onto adobe
After Effects to put it together. The reason I used after effects was because it is so
simple to create the stop-motion short. All I had to do was take the folder of all the
photos in order and drag and drop them into After Effects. The moving image will come
together itself. Once I was happy with this, I rendered the image, which converted the
final product into a .mov file. However it also added around 25 seconds of a black
screen, so I moved over to Adobe Premier Pro with the file. On this, I cut then cut away
the random black screen and export the video as an .mp4 file, which I then uploaded
onto Youtube, finishing my first experiment.
p

31. Practical Research – Experiment 2
For my second experiment, I tried to draw in different
styles. I know I wanted to do a more simplistic look,
but I tried some more abstract as well. After learning
how to draw a female face, I tried doing it in different
ways and tried to find out which one was my
favourite. I prefer the first one I did. It has a cartoon-
ish style to it with the lack of facial features, however
it still has some realism to it as well as the face is
correct and the hair style is realistic to that of a real
person. The other two I don’t think went as well.
While trying to create an abstract style I seem to have
just made badly drawn heads. Abstract still has some
sort or style to it but I think these two heads just look
badly drawn. When in the production section of my
FMP, I will stick to a similar style to the first drawing
as it looks good, while keeping that slightly different
look to a real movie.
p

32. Bibliography

33. Bibliography
1. Anderson, William. (2018) Target Audience Interviews (conducted on April 9th 2019)
2. Anon. (2000). Father and Daughter. Available:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0279079/?ref_=tt_urv. Last accessed 3rd APR 2019.
3. Anon. (2009). Who's Hungry. Available: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7245360/. Last accessed
3rd APR 2019.
4. Anon. (2018). Disney Popularity and Fame. Available:
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/consumer/explore/brand/Disney. Last accessed 9th APR 2019.
5. Anon. (2018). Warner Bros. Popularity and Fame. Available:
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/consumer/explore/brand/Warner_Bros. Last accessed 9th APR 2019.
6. Anon. (2019). history of animation. Available:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_animation. Last accessed 11th APR 2019.
7. Anon. (2019). Stop Motion. Available: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_motion. Last accessed
10th APR 2019.
8. Father and Daughter. (2000). [DVD] Directed by M. Dudok de Wit. The Netherlands: Claire
Jennings, Willem Thijssen.
9. Speeders. (2012). A ranking of Disney films . Available: https://www.imdb.com/list/ls004657651/.
Last accessed 9th APR 2019.
10. StudioMDHR 2017, Cuphead, Video Game, PC, Canada
11. Watson, C. (Unknown). How to draw a female face. Available:
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/210472982568645023. Last accessed 10th APR 2019.
12. Who’s Hungry?. (2009). [Film] Directed by D.Ochs. California Arts: Self-Published
13. Wild, Ewan(2019) Target Audience Research Survey (conducted on April 4th 2019)

34. All experiments are below the Powerpoint on
the blog