Category: Theory with Nigel

Here are some more articles for my draft literature review:

Kivistö, J. (2019). Hybrid Animation : The Process and Methods of Implementing 2D Style in 3D Animation, Theseus [online]. Available at:

https://www.theseus.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/265116/Kivisto_Jerina.pdf?isAllowed=y&sequence=3

Luntraru, C. et al. (2022), Harmonizing 2D and 3D in Modern Animation, RoCHI 2022 [online]. Available at:

DOI: 10.37789/rochi.2022.1.1.11

This week, apart from reading articles for my draft literature review, I decided to create a list of cases, which I would use in my FMP:

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse – 2018

Clause – 2019 

Arcane – 2021

Blue eyes samurai – 2023 

Ultraman: rising – 2024

To be hero X – 2025

As our final goal for this term is to submit literature review, I started to browse different articles which would help me to write it.

For now, I found two works which are relevant for my topic.

Eryna, F. and Saad, N. (2022) A Preliminary Study on the Visual Outcome of Hybrid Animation, KREATE [online], 02, pp 1-7. Available at: 

https://thedesignschool.taylors.edu.my/Kreate/volumes/volume_2/KREATE_Vol_2_Issue_2_202102.pdf

Faria, F. and Peres, C. (2023). The Impact of Hybrid Animation on the Future of Animation, Springer Nature. [online], pp. 271-29. Available at:

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28993-4_20

To set the scope of research for my topic, I added a time framework.

Research topic: The trend towards hybrid animation (blending 2D and 3D) in 2018 – 2025.

The time frame is set from 2018 when the “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” came out and started a massive popularity boom in hybrid animation.

Research question: How does the audience perceive hybrid animation compared to traditional 3D animation?

This week I tried to define one draft research topic. It is a combination of the topics mentioned in the previous post.

Research Topic: The trend towards hybrid animation (blending 2D and 3D).

This topic would allow me to do the research from different angles. I would write about why hybrid animation became popular? How did it start? What are the origins of Hybrid Animation? What are the examples of successful hybrid animations?

This session was dedicated to literature review structure. For the end of this term, we would have to submit a draft literature review, preferably for our future FMP research topic.

That is why, I decided to start narrowing my research topic. I have decided already that it will be about hybrid animation, so I will try to specify some more small topics in this big area.

For now, I identified 3 topics which seems to be the most interesting for me:

1. The evolution of hybrid animation (study the history of the hybrid animation)
2. Audience perception and reception of hybrid animation (why does hybrid animation suddenly became so popular)
3. Aesthetic choices in hybrid animation

This week I decided to focus on the future research topic of my FMP. I am interested in several areas, but my main focus is on the hybrid animation. Hybrid animation combines multiple techniques 2D/3D within a single production to create unique, textured, and efficient visuals. The most well-known example of this technique is ‘Arcane’, however there exist a lot more animations in this style.

My another favorite animation in this technique is ‘To be hero X’:

In this session we covered non-verbal short narrative animations. For such animations, every single detail is important as there is a short amount of time to tell the story. That is why, the main goal is to have a clear structure and plot in this types of animation.

As for our homework, we were asked to find non-verbal short narrative animation. This is my favorite short animation:

This was an introduction session. Nigel explained our assignments for this unit, gave us a summary of thesis proposal and how it should look like.

He asked to start thinking about the research topic for our FMP (final major project), but for now I don’t have any ideas.