Revised COP3 dissertation proposal

Name: Yixing Qin
Degree Programme: Animation
2017/18
CoP3 Essay: To what extent has animation constructed our understanding or view of the WW2?

I would like to discuss and come to a conclusion about the influence of the character designs and plots in animations based on WW2, to achieve this, reference to minor other identical war films is in addition to back up my argument at the same time. The structure of the dissertation would be roughly as follows.

I intend to use the introduction to clarify my direction of study in the main body, with appropriate quotes, to make a critical statement with a strong point to raise the importance of the topic. In my understanding, the reason that the argument is important would be that as an identical topic in films, war, can be a great example in discussing the elements within it, as it involves both cultural, historical, and other aspects as well.

In the first main part of the essay, I intend to explore the topic by quoting relevant academic sources to support my argument, to clarify it and link to the next paragraph, providing the source of triangulating. In additional, I want to separate the discussion by propaganda animations and contemporary animated films based on WW2, in order to compare the character behavior within them.

As for the second majority part of the dissertation, I intend to explore on examples of animation extracts and critiques of professions upon them, to triangulate between them and the argument I made out of by myself, most importantly, referring back to the previous paragraph.

For the reflective practice part, I plan to explore on making of characters on purpose of both reflecting on the identical stereotype designs, and scripts, animation based on them to draw together a critical purposed pastiche outcome to reflect on the study in the previous chapters. To analyse the practice, I intend to constantly linking it back to the point I raised in the dissertation.

In order to draw the statement to a conclusion, the argument would be draw to a statement that I got out of the research and discussion answering the question sat for the topic of the dissertation, with the support of the single conclusions through the essay.

Case studies

Victory Through Air Power(1943)

Disney Propaganda Films around 1943s

Grave of the Fireflies(1988)

Relevant books or journal articles

Annabelle, H. (2013) Animated Documentary, Palgrave Macmillan
Judith, K. (2012) Animated Realism: A Behind the Scenes Look at the Animated Documentary Genre, Oxford: Focal
Wells, P. (2015) Understanding animation, London: Routledge
Ward, P. (2012) Documentary: The Margins of Reality, New York: Columbia University Press
Relevant websites
Pixar Animation. 2017. Character designs [online]
http://pixar-animation.weebly.com/character-design.html (Accessed 15 April 2017)