I think. Therefore, I am!

After Jeanette send me a feedback of my Ethics Approval Application,I sat to ponder over the questions that I intended to ask my Focus Group Participants. I thought I might have not understood what a research involves so I participated in a psychological research myself. Experience? It was informative but I found it to be really entertaining too.

First set of proposed questions

After returning from it,I tried to get a meeting fixed with Sharon. It took over a week. I tried to do some more research and think around ways to get the most out of the focus group fro my research study. Then,I thought, that by the following questions I will just get a generalised overview of the audience. So, I thought it best to get a personality trait questionnaire from which I could categorise them into groups of people that had similar traits/preferences that might/might not result in their behavioural change. I formed some questions and I also undertook many online personality tests to find what other questions I could ask that were relevant to my research study. It took quite sometime to form a questionnaire. 

Personality Trait Questionnaire

Then came the challenge of evaluation once the Focus group was done with. Since, I had made the questionnaire in the form of a Likert Scale,I decided those behavioural traits that were positive would score the highest and the ones that were negative would score lowest. For example, on the question of 'I actively participate in recycling', if the participant ticked on Strongly Agree, he/she would get 5 points. However,if they ticked on Strongly Disagree he/she would me marked 1. Likewise, for Agree, Neutral, and Disagree he/she would be marked 4,3, and 2 respectively.

In this same fashion all the traits would  have been evaluated. However,Sharon enlightened me that since I have had no experience and there is no theory supporting my evaluation it would not hold much water. In fact,she said it would be really a waste of time to categorise as I wanted to know what the general audience feels about my film and not some specific group.

So,my week long reflection and research went down the drain. Currently, I am organising two focus groups. In the first one,I will show the gain-framed message film first and then the loss-framed. Likewise,in the second group, the loss framed film will be shown first and then the gain-framed. After each film same set of questions would be asked regarding the specific film just shown. Then,at the end,with the help of Sharon I have prepared a set of questions that are over the differences/similarities of the two films.

Revised Questionnaire(Still waiting approval)

Modelling Lilly

I have always been involved in Environment Modelling as I really enjoying putting in the detail around the interiors or exteriors of buildings. Its like me back to playing with my doll house! However, this time I making 'the doll'. Our model Lilly is inspired by Lilly D. 

Sheng has done the character designing.

I started with the torso first as we were taking a lot of time to decide the hairstyle(which was fun,actually).It was very necessary to understand the topography of the model as it had to be ready for rigging and animating. My modelling experience prior to this has been of still images or minimal movement but here, we are talking of full-scale animation. Though I started making it somehow I had the feeling that I may not be going in the right direction. 

Working on the torso

Though the torso is not complete yet,I am glad there has been no topography violations of yet. I know of this because I used Digital Tutor to find this out. The character modelling tutorial in Digital Tutor is very simple and makes character modelling look child's play. I have also started making Lilly's face following the tutorial completely this time. 

Basic Face

Lilly (Character) Designing

 We were deciding hairstyles for Lilly(our character). Since, there are three girls in our team we were trying(playing actually)with all sorts of hairstyle that might look good on our character. We weren't getting anywhere as we wanted something fancy but also that would be easy to rig. On Lilly's( our team member) suggestion we took out several print outs and we all came up with different hairstyles that might go with our character. We squared on the 'Elsa' hairstyle sketched by Lilly(our team member again). Here are some of the doodles from all over the class!

Sheng and I tried some realistic ones

Rebecca's Eye-catching( Eye-watering) Suggestions

Lilly's Practical Hairstyles

Tom's Hobbit Inspired Hairstyles( and beards?!)

Reflecting again!

Lately,I have been having trouble taking my research project ahead.It seems as if I have reached a point from where I can go nowhere. I have done a lot of research on the Psychological Theory. I think I understand it well. I think the method I am using to integrate with story-telling is fine too. Still,somehow,when thinking of questions that I intend to ask to my focus group participants,I am not on the right track.

Jeanette adviced me to have a talk through with Sharon about it. I am yet to get a meeting date with Sharon. However,in the meantime I decided to participate in a Research Project conducted by a 4th year Psychology Undergraduate Student whose advertisement had come up in Hermes,so that I get an overview of what might happen at one.

Her research was on how video games might affect aggressive behaviour in people. I was first asked to fill up a questionnaire regarding my general behaviour traits. Then,I played two games. Again,I had to fill up questionnaires between the two and fill up blanks of several words. The two questionnaires had almost the same questions but rephrased differently.

After participating in this I realised that, I was asking those questions to the participants that would answer the main findings for my research. Instead of digging in their psyche indirectly, I was directly asking those technical questions to them that would make no sense to them. If I would have asked such questions to my peers it would have made more sense. They would have known the technical aspects.

However,my research is audience-oriented so it will be better if I find ways to go about this research differently. Currently,I am thinking of showing my films to two different set of participants and then comparing their reviews. 

Rough Story-boarding for the Loss-Framed Story

I have put together some rough sketches that look fine at the moment,going with the narration. I am a bit skeptical for the last bit of narration though. It needs a bit of thinking. 

George is helping me with the animatic. 

Narration- Today, local wildlife is being squeezed into even smaller spaces as...

 Narration- man’s unfathomable need to acquire more space for himself is greater than ever before.

Narration-. Incessant cutting down of trees for urbanisation has robbed birds of their rightful homes.

Narration- According to the Common Census several species of once common birds are becoming extinct.

Narration-An ecological cascade effect of secondary specie dying because of its dependency on the first is obvious.

 If we don’t do our bit today ecosystems collapse and a higher rate of extinction of overall specie is imminent. 

Supervisor Meeting

Today,we had a meeting with Sharon. She was overall happy with the storyboard that we have put together.

Some of the things that might need a look into is for one more human involvement in the story. So,we are planning that Lilly(the owner) will be present in the garden at all times oblivious to the dog-bird fight. Maybe doing some gardening or putting up some clothes to dry. However, since that would be a challenge as putting up clothes will require excellent knowledge of ncloth. We might look into that.

Also by bringing Lilly to the garden it will save us time as we will then just need to make the exterior of the house plus it will save screen time as well.

Another issue that came to the forefront was using 2D Backgrounds with 3D Animation. Sharon told us that it will be easier for us to get things together if we did not try and merge two different animation styles. So, that is a thing that we will be discussing in our next team meeting.

Sharon liked the piece of Narration that I have made for my counterpart research film. Currently,I am working on its visual presentation and story-boarding.

For the next meeting, we are required to have polished Animatic of both the films, 3D Model of Lilly, Colour tones that we might use for the films and background styling.

According to the production schedule, and my planning we must have the Animatic ready by 21st February so that I can go ahead with my Focus Group Research.

Narration of the counterpart film for my research

It took quite sometime and a lot of Research work to get together a piece of narration that might be the base of graphical images for the second film of my Research. The tone that the narrator must use for this should spell doom all over it. It reads thus:

Today, local wildlife is being squeezed into even smaller spaces as man’s unfathomable need to acquire more space for himself is greater than ever before. Incessant cutting down of trees for urbanisation has led astray birds of their rightful homes.

According to the Common Census several species of once common birds are becoming extinct.

An ecological cascade effect of secondary specie dying because of its dependency on the first is obvious.

If we don’t do our bit today ecosystems collapse and a higher rate of extinction of overall specie is imminent.