1 / Brainstorming and Initial Research

Fig 1

I started to brain storm my interests and potential ideas for the essay.

I did some brief primary research [fig.1] by asking friends and family what animations have stood out to them over time and why, in order to get an understanding of what attracts other people to animation and looking for more prospects for potential ideas. Story, emotion, colour vibrancy and design seem to be king. After narrowing down some ideas for the essay, I explored each of these further to see whether I thought it would be a topic that I could really delve into.

  Fig 2

I looked into colour: http://www.peachpit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=2461896  http://people.psych.cornell.edu/~jec7/pubs/ColoringKate.pdf , visual development: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fF43pMRZamw , https://blog.animationmentor.com/what-is-visual-development-in-animation/ , and landscapes, and what it means to be a good artist in these particular areas of art by watching videos by the amazing artists Aaron Blaise and Laura Price. [notes] 

I briefly explored what discussions were being had in regards to children’s psyche and media: https://allpsych.com/journal/violentmedia/, https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-child-psychology-2795067, which led onto other concepts about what our minds perceive and how. http://vanseodesign.com/web-design/biophilia-effect/ speaks about the calming effects of biophillia, and https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/02/applying-mathematics-to-web-design/ about maths and symmetry being pleasing to the eye. This is relevant because it shows how there are things we process in a way that we aren't even conscious of.

https://www.winmentalhealth.com/childrens_movies_media_effects.php 25.8.19 and https://allpsych.com/journal/violentmedia/ discusses how watching violence manifests, this and although it won’t be a focus on my essay it strengthens the idea that we need to understand the huge impact that media can have on developing brains. 

I found this article https://venngage.com/blog/marketing-psychology/ about visuals in marketing and what will increase your reach to an audience greater or less so. Although it’s not exactly relevant to animation, it shows how people are so susceptible to imagery and that it will strengthen whatever agenda that you have, seeing as 65% of people are visual learners and our brain processes visuals 60000 times faster than text, according to this article.

I was choosing between these for a title idea: Discussing colour scripts in visual development and the importance of colour in film OR Discussing how cultural representation in animation can affect a child’s psyche.

Althought colour seems more relevant to my visual development practice, I chose the latter because I knew I could practice my colour theory in the visual development whilst also exploring racial representation, which has personally been very important to me growing up and I feel it’s an important discussion to have in order to progress the quality of the animation industry, something that is currently in the spotlight in the industry. However I did find some really helpful mentions of the importance of children’s films as tools to learn whilst researching colour in this journal http://people.psych.cornell.edu/~jec7/pubs/ColoringKate.pdf which expresses the fact that “children’s films can serve as an important medium for conveying both artistic and educational information” which supports my direction that children’s animations can be used to stem racial prejudice at a young age.