Today I recieved the feedback for my fourth draft of my dissertation. This had some fixes to carry out throughout the whole paper. Some little things which were needed to accomplish were to increase the size of my visuals and to include a short description explaining what the audience was looking at. I also had to write why my text was important and the need for reading this instead of going onto the internet for something else similar. Finally, I was told that I had to get some expert texts included within my writing, these would consist of books. I managed to find 2 relevant ones and I implemented them within my write up.
With all of these fixes carried out I was proud of what I had created and was happy that I had spent this session today patching up all of the relevant information to the best quality I could so far.
Today I focused on completing the feedback help which I recieved when I had my 1 to 1 with my lecturer. There was a lot of little tweaks all around which could improve the state of my text.
Firstly, I re-wrote my methodoly section and this time including the relevant information which I needed within. I spoke about what I did while researching to test if my study was efficient or not. I also re-did my reference page, this time around using the APA6th style. I looked at the Universities reference to this and how to lay it out so once completed this time it was all correct.
I also filled up my analysis section a little more including some personal feedback on the research and development which I had done. This gave a nice feel and comparison with the audience as I was at the same point they were when they are reading my text. Along with this I removed some stylistic design which I had used to fill in the word count. Overall this cleaned a lot of my writing up.
Finally, I included pictures on my text, I used screen grabs from the latest version of Maya and some of my practice rigs to be able to provide relevant visuals along with my text. Doing this was really efficient as is split my writing up and allowed for some breathing space for the audience to enjoy. I used the terms (See Fig 1) and contained a (Fig 1) next to the image for easy visual identification. With that added in I also created a figure list at the end of the text just above the reference list. This was created in order to explain what the visual was and where I sourced it from to the audience. The final little tweaks were a modification to the research question, the 2.0 line spacing and the full justification.
With all of this done I am extremely happy with my 3rd draft of this text and I hope that it is nearing a high quality standard of writing.
Today I had a 1 to 1 with my lecturer about the Research Project module. I showed him the work I had completed up to this point and managed to get some feedback from it.
Firstly, I got told to make sure to include some critical understanding and recommendations along with some reflective writing. This would increase my quality of work a lot along with allowing some personal feedback within. Next we spoke a little about my research question and that instead of pipeline I should contain the words ‘industry workflow and considerations’, with that included I need to know what industry level means in production. Moving through I was told that I should cut down some of my content and move away from the stylistic approach to the writing. Such as a section I included the words ‘play around with’, I should have just used experimented.
We moved to the methodology section and I was asked what my research methodology was, for me I used literature reviews which was reading and understanding sources before using the contents. Another type of methodology which I should consider if I have used it the method of practice and research. With all that I will also need to make sure to mention how I have reviewed the research such as if I went through testing as I understood things or just used the own visuals for my clarification. With the most important question of: what method am I using to complete this project?
Further down I was told to include a more indepth analysis of my study, this will enable me and the reader to understand what the point of this research was. With this I should contain screen grabs showing visuals throughout which help with the images to text ration of my writing. Another small visual assistance I found out would be to use 2.0 line spacing along with full justification. This way it allows the text to be more easily read. Finally, I was told to keep in the APA 6th style of referencing to stick with the University guidelines.
With all this spoke over I felt a lot better with my progress and it also gave me ways to improve which I am happy about. I will make sure to apply the relevant fixes soon. With this I was told that if the writing is good enough it a good practice would be to get it converted to a .PDF and have it printed into a book for hand outs into industry, I found this very interesting.
Today I had another brief session with my lecturer about the research project module. I had a objective of having 1500 word completed on it for this point which thankfully I had done. I got told about a question sheet that had been provided to me which has some professional questions that I should answer within my text.
These consisted of professional sources that I have included within which will allow for my text to become reliable and not just contain information from all over, I also had a lot of personal information to fill in such as why the subject matter is important to me and what I thought going into the research and what I want my outcomes to be. Finally, I had to fill in why this was important within the animation sector which managed to bring my text to a better standard than it was before. I feel with all of this added onto my text it will allow for a more professional and in depth piece of writing.
Today I got some assistance from my lecturer about the Research Project. We looked through my statement of intent and spoke about what I was going to write about in the text. Firstly, I was asked what was the question for the research. This consisted of the overall question I was answering within the text. I have thought about this since and came up with the title of: ‘What are the methods and considerations when creating a rig suitable for an animator?‘. I feel as though this will fit perfectly with what I am wanting to put into my text because it contains the fact that the different methodologies will be included within along with the fact that it contains thing to think about also.
Shown above is a helpful diagram giving a small layout to how this text should be written. It contains 4 main headings with bullet points underneath targeting areas which I should write about and explain. This will be great when writing me text because I can get the correct structure for it.
I made sure to move over to my 2nd draft of this research writing and update it in accordance with this newly found information. I added the research question and made sure to implement any of the subheading shown above that I hadn’t spoken about previously in my 1st draft. With all this added on I felt like it increased the standard of my text a bunch and allowed it to reach a more professional standard.
Today I finished my first draft for my writing topic of the Pipeline of Rigging in Maya. This text I chose to be written as the dissertation version meaning i had to write 6000 words of information. My main accomplishments for today was to finish of the paragraphs I had been working on last week and also read through the text to make sure it all was worded correctly. After reading through I checked it all over again to see if there was any errors, which happily I couldn’t find. With this I had finished my first draft for the Research Project module, this is really helpful because it has provided me a skeleton of work which I can edit and change if needs be along with a strong starting position for any later drafts I will need to create up until the handing in date.
I attended a lecture which was all about the Research Project module. The module gave insight into a new source review document which I should use for the current year at university being in level 6 now. This was more professional looking than the older review research grid and allowed for a more indepth perspective on each individual source uncovered. I managed to transfer over all of my sources onto this new document and am pleased with the results and how this document looks and feels in comparison with the old one.
Later on in the session I was placed into a breakout room which consisted of a small group of about 4 others in my class, this was created so we could talk about our idea towards the research project research task. It was very helpful as it allowed for me to talk to members of my class and get some feedback on my idea and how it would work in a giant text format.
Finally, I worked on my text a little more. I advanced further through the rigging process and included more information within the extra considerations section. This information is very helpful towards my subject matter along with the general aspect of using Maya and I am glad that I found the information out.
Today I continued to build on my Research Project writing task. I have beefed up each of the sections I had filled out the previous day along with including a few extra paragraphs to increase the audiences knowledge on the subject of Rigging. I have also done a lot of knowledge building for myself because I have watched through a few videos which guide beginners to rig and what the most simple way of doing it is to start off. They were very helpful and I feel as though I am getting a small idea of what needs to be done to rig my own custom character on Maya.
I found some more helpful sources that I added to my Review Research Grid, this will be helpful if I am ever needing to go back and revisit my sources because I will have all the information about them in one place.
Today I also took my first steps towards the Research Task module. I created a skeleton for the Dissertation. This contained the same sort of layout for the other academic and professional writings I have completed. I included the headings that would be involved in the text along with some basic information to fit into it. I also added a reference list along with a section for my abstract, overview and conclusion. With this created it has given me a good idea of what to research and plan out in order to complete this huge writing assessment module.
Along with this I found some more research material and updated it onto my Research Grid which contains all of my sources in one place with information about each one!
Today I attended another lecture for my Research Project Module, I had released my plan for the module which consisted of the pipeline of: Modelling, Texturing and Rigging in Maya. My lecturers read through my idea and recommended that it would be good practice to focus on this research section. They recommended looking into an author named ‘George Maestri’ who released very good fundamentals to rigging a character. Along with this they also told me to look on LinkedIn along with the Salford Library to gain some great insight into it as well by using the many amazing sources that are available for me to learn from. They made sure to let me know to stick with the fundamentals and learn the basics before rigging a hugely difficult model, this will be effective because it will give me good practice in order to move to harder tasks in the near future.
I heard about some effect manipulators in Maya which may be helpful for me, they are called: ‘nParticles’ and ‘Bifrost’. They simulate different effects to allow you to further your animation than just with a basic scene.
What is research? Research is a systematic inquiry used to describe,m explain, predict or control some observed phenomenon (the research topic). My lecturer said to use ‘The Research Funnel’ this is to work from the general to the specific.
Something To Consider When Picking A Research TaskConsiderations Of My Idea
I also got told to understand general methodology of Quantitative and Qualitative designs. Quantitative methods are used to examine the relationship between variables with the primary goal being to analyse and represent that relationshop mathamatically through statistical analysis. Basically it is a lot of data and impersonal. Qualitative methods are chosen when the goal of the research problem is to examine, understand and describe a phenomenon. Basically is is fewer, higher quality sources with very personal information.
My lecturer told me to not be hesitant to reach out into industry and collect any relevant information toward my research task. This would be good practice because it will allow me to get used to talking to industry and gain relevant practice from a professional’s point of view.
Completing A Statement Of Intent draft, I got tasked with creating a draft for my Statement Of Intent. This would contain what I learnt today about my chosen idea in more depth and detail in order to get a stronger grasp on what I am doing. Creating this was extremely helpful as it allowed me to right down my plans and ideas on a document. I also found 3 sources that I was able to add onto my Review Research Grid I had created.
While doing some research I found 4 videos that will be helpful for me to start of my rigging experience. They each target different things but I will include them all below!
Animation Blog 