New Thesis Question

I've come up with a new, more specific thesis question:

"How can animation be used to create complimentary content for an existing Japanese language textbook?"

I like this question because it makes my project easier to structure. I thinking of using an existing textbook that I am familiar with called "Nakama" to pull content from. I might choose to make animations for certain sections of the book, or create a digital-textbook version of one chapter with a slue of additional features.

10 X 10 Exercise

100 ideas for thesis

Where do you see yourself after graduation?

Assignment: Choose 3 local agencies/corporations and 3 national/international agencies/corporations that you are interested in. For each one, talk about what they do, why you're interested, and what position you might want.

Local

Legwork Studio

Legwork is doing exactly what I imagine myself doing after graduation: animation, editing, and a variety of other motion design things. I think it's really cool how many different animation styles they work with, from stop-motion-esque to hi-fidelity pseudo-realism. They aren't hiring interns at the moment, but if they open up to interns, I would probably want a position editing, touching-up, and creating animatics.

Frost Motion

Like Legwork, Frost isn't bound by style. They do a lot of motion-tracking work, some full-3D pieces, and even some hand-drawn animation. This seems like another place where I could gain a lot of experience in motion. Frost doesn't advertise their openings on their website, so I don't know if or what they could possibly want to add to their team. I need a mentor-ship more than anything, so if they need someone to do some of the more menial, repetitive tasks of editing, I think that could be a great place to start.

Backflip Studios

Backflip develops and maintains mobile games. If I want to go down the game-dev route, this might be a great place to start. The nice this about mobile games is that their premise is often simple. A mobile game stands out when the micro-transactions are either non-invasive, or non-existent, the gameplay is short and well implemented, there is a frequent sense of gratification, and the art/animation is subtle, but interesting. They aren't looking for interns or entry-level artists, but that's how I would want to start

Studio Hippo

Another animation studio. This one creates animations that are definitely at my skill level. This place might make the most sense to start.

Spillt

Another motion graphics/animaton studio. I don't know much about it yet other than the fact that it's pretty well known.

National/International

Blur

I found out only a few years ago that Blur is responsible for some of the most amazing video game trailers that I've every seen. And they don't just make game trailers. They also make a lot of other CGI videos. My CGI experience isn't as solid as the folks in the 3D animation program, but it is something I enjoy doing. So maybe I could find an entry-level position in compositing, editing, or scene-building.

Rooster Teeth

I've been a fan of Rooster Teeth since the early days of Red vs Blue. They're always hiring interns and starting new animated shows. It would just be a matter of proving my value to them.

Kyoto Animation

It is my ultimate, end-goal dream to work for this anime studio. The thing about KyoAni is that they have a school that teaches people to draw, animate, and edit in their style. So there are three large barriers that prevent me from getting hired right after graduation: I don't live in Japan, my Japanese language skills aren't conversation-ready, and I would need to get into and then graduate from the KyoAni school.

BrandNewSchool

A big place. Looks comparable to Blur, except they don't specialize in trailers.

Additional Gaming Studios

Blue Goji - VR

Blizzard Entertainment - Overwatch/Starcraft/World of Warcraft - Dream Big

UX Research Techniques

In class, we took note of 5 distinct research techniques/items that help designers consider their audience/user.

The 5 things are: personas, user roles, customer journey maps, experience maps, and data driven A/B Testing

• Personas are fake people, based on real audience members, with actionable attributes/characteristics. Example: "Bob is color blind and doesn't have a car." If we're designing for a public transportation system, these things are very relevant.
• User roles define characteristics of users at different points in their journey. Several different kinds of people will inevitably need to play the same user roles in order to reach the end of their journey. Example: Bob and Susan both fill the "passenger" role when they ride a bus.
• Customer journey maps lay out the events a user may go through in order to reach their end goals. Example: Susan looks at a bus schedule on her phone, takes the free mall ride to Union station, looks at computer screens in the station, looks for a map, asks for directions, buys a ticket, gets on a bus, and gets off somewhere.
• Experience maps are journey maps with the incorporation/consideration of user roles and emotions throughout the journey.
• Data driven A/B testing...I'm not sure I totally understand this one. My current understanding is that this is basically straight-forward user testing. The researcher asks the 'test subject' to complete certain tasks and takes note of where the person get stuck or confused.

For my project, I will definitely make use of personas and user roles based on my classmates who are studying Japanese. Relevant persona traits may include the type of learner people consider themselves (auditory/visual/kinetic/etc.), what devices people use/prefer, how they prefer to study, etc. I won't know my user roles until I have a solid idea of what I'm trying to solve/produce. I will probably use experience maps instead of journey maps because they're basically the same thing, but experience maps include user role information. I definitely want to conduct user testing, but I'm not sure that it will be A/B...I need to look that up...



Oh, okay. Yeah, that sounds like a good idea. Whenever I have two versions of an idea, it would be great to compare them.

Current Thesis Question and Proposed Solution

How can motion design, narrative, and micro-animations be used to facilitate Japanese language study tools that accelerate the language learning process?

I plan to develop (or at least design a concept for) a video series and/or interactive platform for learning/studying Japanese.

Why/how am I qualified to tackle this thesis question? Before I switched majors, I was in the 3D Animation program and pursuing a minor in computer science. In my first two years of college, I obtained some basic animation and coding knowledge. When I switched to the Digital Design program, I continued to build on my experiences and decided to focus on motion design. In the summer of 2015, my study abroad trip in Japan made such an impact on me that I started taking Japanese classes at Metro State University. I'm always looking for new ways to learn and study the language, so now I'm going to create my own study tool that could be used by my classmates and other Japanese learners. They say the best way to learn is by teaching and that's exactly what I plan to do.