Triangulation.

Specific areas of interest - Question? 

Where in animation can we find examples of conspiracy theory and mystery, and can we argue that audiences enjoy these theories as they are a way of creating a community amongst viewers.

What have I found out so far? 

- Why people believe in them. 

- Finding conspiracies theories in animation

- Lizard people run society according to a large amount of the world.

- Big foot.

- People still think the world is a disk.

What are my core texts?

Suspicious Minds

Tin Tin

Scooby Doo

Gravity Falls.

Case Studies - What images, examples, phenomena.

How does it link together with your proto-question and quotes? 

An image from the film - Suspicion

An image of a persons silhouette in an illusion

An image of Harley Quin shouting about society.

They link as they all base around conspiracies. 

Gravity falls follows the same pattern of theories and mystery's and has a massive base of followers who aimed to solve the puzzle before the end of the show. 

Thoughts on Practical? 

Backgrounds with hidden messages.

An image of the board of suggestions given to me after presenting my work to my classmates.

Sentient Spaces/Living Landscapes

For this task I decided to create a background that includes a TV as my question focuses on the community that's brought together. I used some shapes that represent theories, for example the tringle as a connection to the illuminati. An image of an eye as if someone where watching. There are more subtle nods to other theories in this also.

Study Task 3 - Images and Theory

1. Select and define important terms / concepts you have discovered through your reading. 

• Blame
• Suspicion
• Illusion
• Corruption
• Controversial
• rumour

2.

Suspicion.

This image is actually from the film suspicion. It demonstrates suspicion on the character heavily, by casting a dark shadow over him, hiding his face. It has the long staircase, with the light casting a skewed shadow. And the drink on the tray he carries is highlighted, as if to signify it, as though he might have tampered with the drink. 

But this is all suspicion, it is my mind conspiracizing against this man, due to some shadow, when he might be just carrying a perfectly harmless drink up the stairs.

Illusion

I feel this image could represent more than just illusion, it could also represent the illusion of society that a lot of conspiracies claim to be. This could represent the illusion of people, as the ‘illusion’ in this images focuses on the silhouette of a person. Which you could argue, is the representation of how people and our society has this air of illusion around it, falsities and lies shrouding the truth of our democracy.

Blame

Harley Quinn expressing her belief that society is to blame. I find this is a good example due to one it being an animated character expressing herself. And secondly it shows the need to blame others for the downfall, to find blame in our governmental system, to pass it on to the ‘them’ in our world. Not to hold the problem, and believe that we could be to blame.

3. Theorists.

I've not yet found several underpinning theorist, however image 1 and image 3 already come from films so this already gives them an audience, giving a sense of a community of people out there, who recognise these images. Which helps answer my question. 

People watch the same thing and talk about what might happen this is more than just predicting a plot it’s this will happen because this has happened already and he/she has an agenda and a secret story – things are not as they appear, there’s more to be told, there’s something out there= conspiracy theory. 

I do though have the ability to link Rob Brotherton the author to the book Suspicious Minds.  

Study Task 2 - Reading and understanding texts

What CONCEPTS is the author trying to communicate?

• Why do we believe conspiracies?
• Test in which studies show the effects of different environments, causing people to believe and come up with their own conspiracies.
• Conspiracies past and present.
• The difference between what conspiracies where, and what they are now.  
• Is everyone a conspiracist?

What are the KEY QUOTES - KEY POINTS?

• “Sometimes, it would seam, buying into a conspiracy is the cognitive equivalent of seeing meaning in randomness.” - [P. 14]

• “We do not live in an age of conspiracy theories and have not for some time.” - Uscinski and Parent , [P.21].

What EXAMPLES are used by the author?

• Joe Uscinski and Joseph Parent ~  Political scientists that did research into the peak time of conspiracies.
• The great fire of Rome.
• The illuminati

Can you find real world EXAMPLES that you feel follow this model of thought?

• Lizard people -  A vast majority of our society believe that shape shifting lizard people run the world.
• The assassination of JFK

How can this theory be related to animation or your theme?

The book is something I hope to base my essay around, I feel it will strongly help aide my investigation into how and why conspiracies are so widely believed. It will relate to animation through the plot’s of several animations that focus on mysteries and conspiracies such as Gravity Falls, Scooby Doo...etc. 

Summery :

To Summarize, there is a mass amount of people that believe in conspiracy, and yes some may have ‘evidence’ to back up their thesis, and I am not here to debunked those ideas. I merely wish to endeavour into the question of why these theories come about. Conspiracies have altered with time, as most things do, but how drastically have they changed? And how have they affected our society to date? These are questions I am excited to research into. If you were to ask most people if they felt they were a conspiracy theorist, their answers would most likely be no, but I disagree, everyone has an ounce of conspiracist in theme, everyone has an opinion.

Study Task 1 - Initial Ideas.

How do aesthetics and style reflect the content, function and audience of animation?

How do aesthetics and style reflect the content, function and audience of animation?

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Ivor The Engine ~ Wales ~ 1959. 

The Queen makes the red dragon on a green and white background the official flag of Wales

Global:

The Day the Music Died" plane crash kills musicians Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, J. P. Richardson and pilot near Clear Lake Iowa.

Gravity Falls ~ America ~ 2012.

America - Hurricane Sandy's storm surge slams into the Eastern seaboard and causes destruction,causes almost 50 deaths in the states and leaves more than 8 million customers without electricity.

Global:

Obama Re-elected Second Term as US President

Miraculous Ladybug ~ France ~ 2015. 

he 500th Anniversary of King Francis I's Reign. 

Global:

two radicalized brothers attacked the offices of satirical French magazine, 17 people were killed over three days, while all three gunmen were eventually killed by armed police in raids.  

Howls moving castle ~ Japan ~ 2005 .

PM Koizumi wins a landslide victory in early general elections.

Global: 

Eris, the largest known dwarf planet in the solar system, is discovered by the team of Michael E. Brown, Chad Trujillo, and David L. Rabinowitz using images originally taken on October 21, 2003,

The Old Man and the Sea ~ Russian ~ 1999. 
Yeltsin resigns in favour of Vladimir Putin, who takes over buoyed by popularity over major military campaign against Chechen rebels. 

Global : 

The Euro currency is introduced.

OUAN401 - Proposal

As I do for next year I plan to look into conspiracy theories. I want to choose a topic that any related to history and facts and fiction, and what better way to do this then looking into some of history's biggest controversial claims of historic events. I decided to choose this as well as it generally does interest me having mysteries that aren't solved and related things to that has always been something I have been extremely fascinated by, I'm a sucker for a good mystery. And relish this opportunity to delve into some of history's biggest intrigues.

I will link my proposal presentation, as that has morphed the research needed to look into the beginnings of this interesting endeavour into conspiracy theories.

Link : https://issuu.com/medi-hafedwards/docs/proposal

OUAN401 - the evaluation.

This module, I found incredibly difficult to do. I have rather minimal skills when it comes to writing and struggle with spelling grammar and punctuation. All skills needed to write a standard essay of academic standards. Being a person with dyslexia brings a lot of difficulty into writing, do feel I have tried my best even with the obstacle of dyslexia.

 To begin, I created a half-hearted effort at an essay, and now I see how the first rendition of the essay was not qualified enough to be able to be a passing grade. I feel I've come along way when regarding this essay as I found that I have had to challenge my skills a lot. But I am surprisingly impressed with what I was able to do when I actually sat down and did it which was difficult for me, as my time management skills are extremely poor.I feel after really researching into the essay that it was a lot easier than I was expecting it to be which is something I should really take into account in future assignments when regarding writing

I did however, enjoy researching my topic I made the wise decision of choosing something that did interested me, and due to this I didn't really want to create something that was deemed of a good quality. Regarding the first part of the essay I feel went rather smoothly I enjoyed looking into the creator of the quote and how he had looked into how history was written. I did however find comparing the essay with an animation rather difficult and felt my essay was rather lacking in that specific area.

The concertina sketchbook was an extremely enjoyable aspect of the brief. Keeping a sketchbook I feel is something rather rewarding, and being able to create one to go along with the academic research gone into the essay I found to be a very enjoyable experience. Some aspects of the concertina sketchbook I feel could have been improved upon but there are other aspects that I am rather proud of and am happy with but this is something I will take on board and hope to do better in the future.

Earlier mentioned before my time management with extremely poor, I should have been a lot more on top of the workload I was given but I struggle when it comes to keeping up with all the work that I am expected to do, I am working to better this and hopefully regarding future essays another cop work required I shall be much more balanced with my time management.        

  As a conclusion I would say the whole of this module has been an eye-opener and one that I can definitely say has opened my eyes into academic writing and to definitely look into bettering my ability to research and write in an academic manner. I Feel like I have developed somewhat from this and aspire to continue to develop my skills in the future.

 

OUAN4O1 -The storyboard.

The storyboards was something I wanted to be colourful and interlocked with both the animated sit feature and the quotation. I wanted it to be a fast-paced quick burst of facts. As I felt history is a fleeting thing so I wanted the animation to be a quick fleeting sort of form of documenting in a visual manner. Generally I am happy with the outcome of the storyboard, I say this as I feel that it all of the criteria I wanted it to reach. It opens with the boat of a pirate ship or a boat in general with the male gender symbol on the front. This was meant to represent how women were meant to bring bad luck upon a vessel or ship. I then move on to having Joan of Arc jump across the screen as I felt she would be a good form of representation to women's rights to fight and represent their country, I then move on to using lightning to transition over to an image of the suffragettes holding propaganda posters. The suffragettes part to reveal a Viking woman a cake and a cow three seemingly unrelated things. The car was meant to be a form of comic relief for the animation due to cows being more well-known for being a docile animal, they are actually more of a killer then a shark which is known to be a much more fearsome animal. The cake was meant to represent the doubt surrounding Marie Antoinette's let them eat cake saying. The Viking woman is wearing the incorrect attire for a Viking, a male Viking wearing the right helmet enters the shot to remove her helmet angrily giving her a stern look. I wanted to end the animation rather whimsical note as I wanted it to be over educational but or enjoyable sort of animation, and am happy with the outcome.

OUAN401 - the concertina sketchbook.

Regarding the sketchbook, I found that I really enjoyed the making of it. I found creating pages to be earned experience that really helped me clarify a lot of what I should have been researching into. I'm really happy with some of the drawings I've made and am equally unhappy with some of them as well. I really enjoyed making the colour palettes part of the sketchbook due to it having such vibrant colours and it was interesting to learn about how these colours have affected our history. I decided to focus mainly on keeping some aspects drawn some aspects quotations and some aspect screenshots of certain television shows and related things on that. I felt having the sketchbook with me was quite relaxing almost as it was something I could go back to when I feel lost when it came to the essay.

Here are some screenshots of a few pages that I really liked creating I really felt that I like to share.

OUAN401 - Peer review

Recently, we had a peer review where we showed each other are concertina sketchbooks. I found this to be incredibly helpful as it was good to see how other people had gone around creating their sketchbooks and to hear what people thought of my own work.

I had a lot of positive feedback from my peers, each of them saying how that my concertina followed a algorithm or a pattern and it was a very clear pattern which pleased me as I was aiming for. I did though, realise that I was falling behind with the amount of work that was expected of me to do by that point. I decided from there that I needed to work harder and to create more content for my sketchbook.

In general, I found this to be a really enjoyable and helpful look into our sketchbooks I realise now that I need to begin planning my storyboard as the deadline is approaching and I need to be able to create the storyboard and have it ready for the third essay.