Title: The Creative Process, Journey to First Animation
Author: Jenna Seikkula
University: Aalto-University School of Art
Department: Design and Architecture Department of Media Visual Communication
Year: 2017
Keywords: Animation, Creative process, Motivation, Problem solving, Failure, Tokyo
Level of design
This Master Thesis looks very clean. If I had to guess, I would say the University has their own template for students to use for their thesis or papers and such. It could even be a Latex template. This makes it look very organized and consistent and I think is very helpful and time saving because you don’t need to think and stress over typography. layout and style.
Degree of innovation
The empirical part of this thesis is about a short animation that the author did during her studies. It took her about 2 years to develop the topic and six months for the whole production. The theoretical part focuses on the whole creative process and the motivation and research of the animation.
Since it is a classical short 2D frame-by-frame animation inspired by japanese anime and Disney movies I would say it is not very innovative. She even used Photoshop as a tool for drawing and animation.
Independence
The author did everything herself, except the music. This is a lot of work, and she talks about the motivation and the process in her thesis. She also mentions her struggles and how to finish a big project on your own. Which I think is very interesting and personal. I like how she reflects on herself and the project and writes about it.
Outline and structure
The structure is very clean and every chapter has a connection, to her work and you can see the influence and the thought process behind it.
Degree of communication
It is very easy to understand, and she describes and explains everything. I think she also didn’t use any abbreviations or acronyms.
Scope of the work
The work consists of 77 pages, including title page, Table of Content, Bibliography and references.
Orthography and accuracy
I did not notice anything. The thesis was very clear and easy to read and understand.
Literature
The Bibliography is quite short and consists of only 7 entries. There are some books and articles about animation, creativity and even motivation and problem solving. After that she lists all the references she has used or discussed.