Design Research Methodology
DESIGN RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
13.04.2020 - 13.06.2020 (Week 1 - Week 14)
Maisarah bt Muhd Zamri (0335576)
Design Research Methodology
RES60604 MIB
13.04.2020 (Week 1)
It was still the introduction week, so it was probably just the introduction to the module, and I'm sure the lecturers told us what was going to happen in this semester and what we were going to do - how the projects are going to be done.
Yeah, that's probably it.
Ah, and we were told to pick a specialization already :') It's because this module is basically just a starting point for us to understand the specialization we're gonna take. We're going to do research about a specific topic that we're interested in within the specialization we picked.
Specialization I picked: Entertainment Design
Topic of interest: Character Design
20.04.2020 (Week 2)
Research Proposal draft #1
What I wanna study: (animation) Character Design
Working title: Aesthetic design over working design
Research problem: Visual representation of a character's personality/identity
Problem statement: Characters are defined by their personalities/identities. However, there are characters that are designed to look aesthetically pleasing while disregarding said character's identity. Unless the personality of the character is instilled into the character's design itself, the character would have no depth and end up being bland.
Research questions:
- Is it acceptable to design a character purely aesthetically without regarding the character's personality/identity?
- Does it matter if a character's design reflects their personality/identity or not, as long as they look interesting?
- Does instilling a character's personality into their design make them too predictable, thus uninteresting?
Research objective: To determine the importance of a working character design
Hypothesis:
- The visual design of a character has to relate to the character's personality/identity to make them more relevant.
- Aesthetic and working design are equally important to construct an engaging character
Proposal draft #1 Feedback:
27.04.2020 (Week 3)
Research Proposal draft #2
What I wanna study: (animation) Character Design
Working Title: Aesthetic and Personality Driven Character Design
Research problem: Characters are defined by their personalities/identities. However, there are characters that are designed to look aesthetically pleasing while disregarding said character's identity. Unless the personality of the character is instilled into the character's design itself, the character would have no depth and end up being bland.
Research questions:
- Is it acceptable to design a character purely aesthetically without regarding the character's personality/identity?
- Does it matter if a character's design reflects their personality/identity or not, as long as they look interesting?
- Does instilling a character's personality into their design make them too predictable, thus uninteresting?
Research objective: - To determine the importance of a design that reflects the character's personality
- To study what makes a character's design interesting
- To study the art of instilling stereotypes into characters without making them boring
Hypothesis: Aesthetic and personality-based designs are equally important in order to construct an engaging character
04.05.2020 (Week 4)
Research Proposal Slides
11.05.2020 (Week 5)
18.05.2020 (Week 6)
25.05.2020 (Week 7)
01.06.2020 - 08.06.2020 (Week 8 - Week 9)
Methodologies
At this point of the module, we are going to conduct our research on the topic picked. To do this, we have to choose two types of methodologies - quantitative-qualitative/quantitative-quantitative/qualitative-qualitative - and I decided to do Quantitative-Qualitative.
Observational Studies for Visual analysis
Animation - One piece vs My Hero Academia
- One Piece has a lot of characters with amazing designs that compliment the characters’ personalities/abilities
- One Piece has been animated since 1999 and has a lot of fans
- Like OP, MyHeroAcademia has a lot of characters with different abilities (they are heroes so they have costumes designed to suit their abilities)
- MyHeroAcademia has only been animated since 2016, it has gained a lot of fans because of the characters
- MyHeroAcademia characters each have their own personalities and backstories to support their becoming
- They are also two of the mainstream animations so
- I’m gonna break down how the designs of selected characters show their personalities/abilities
Characters to look at:
> Luffy (rubber ability) - OP
> Sanji (strong legs) - OP
> Usopp - OP
> Ace (fire ability) - OP
> Doflamingo (string ability) - OP
>> Deku (super strength) - MHA
>> Bakugou (explosion ability) - MHA
>> Ingenium (engine/speed ability) - MHA
>> Red Riot (hardening ability) - MHA
>> Present Mic (loud voice ability) - MHA
22.06.2020 (Week 11)
29.06.2020 (Week 12)
Visual Analysis Draft
(btw this draft has no images as it's just a draft. I put fig 1.1, 1.2 etc so that I know where to insert the images when I do write the visual analysis for real. Also, there are changes on which character decided to do an analysis on)
“One Piece” and “My Hero Academia” are two different Japanese animations, but with similar concepts. These two animations are set in a world where people have special abilities, with some differences, of course.
The world of One Piece is as fictional as it can get, with fishmen, giants, underwater countries, sky islands, etc. And as mentioned before, there are people who possess special abilities.
Meanwhile, My Hero Academia takes place in a world where 70% of the human population possesses superpowers (quirks) that develop naturally at the average age of 5, but other than that, the universe in which the characters live in is pretty much the same as ours.
In relation to the differences in the two worlds’ settings, characters in One Piece who have special abilities maintain their original looks, while characters in My Hero Academia would sometimes have their physical appearance altered to show the abilities they possess.
However, while My Hero Academia keeps the characters looking fairly human-like (the proportions and general appearance), One Piece takes human anatomy and just threw it into the ocean.
Main Characters
Another similarity these two animations share is how they designed their main character. Despite the crazy world these characters live in, they look borderline uninteresting compared to the exciting setting they are put into.
Monkey D Luffy is a lanky boy who wears a simple red vest (later changed to an open, long-sleeved red cardigan) and blue shorts with cuffs along with a pair of sandals and a straw hat as the cherry on top. His simple design actually reflects his simple-minded nature. Despite looking basic as heck, his design does function well with his personality as well as his ability to stretch like rubber.
The simplicity in the way Luffy dresses reflects his background as a village boy. The sleeveless-ness and shorts gives him freedom to move without any restriction, given the fact that he makes big movements when in battle. However, after the time skip, he changed his vest to a long-sleeved cardigan, which takes away his freedom of movement. It would actually make more sense for him to go sleeveless after the time skip because he possesses abilities to inflate his limbs into bigger sizes, and the sleeves would just be in the way. Interesting fact: before the time skip, his vest has 3 buttons, and after the time skip, his cardigan has 4 buttons. This is a small detail telling us that he has leveled up some way.
Midoriya Izuku (hero name: Deku) is a timid boy who was born quirkless, but attained a quirk through the number 1 hero who passed down his super strength to him. Izuku has fluffy hair, big, round eyes, and freckles. It was mentioned by the artist/author that he was purposely designed to look plain, but these traits portray his meek and innocent personality well.
His initial hero costume doesn’t contribute much to his abilities. He had designed his costume solely based on his idol hero (the number 1 hero who gifted him the quirk he now possesses). After a few damaging fights, however, he had upgraded his costume to better suit his ability and his change of style in combat.
Female Characters
When it comes to shounen anime, female characters are often over-sexualized, and One Piece and My Hero Academia aren’t innocent. One Piece has a more severe case of over-sexualizing female characters, however, because it was first published in late 70’s when female characters are mostly a tool for fan-service. My Hero Academia was serialized in mid-2014, where people are starting to be more aware of the state of society.
Nami and Robin are two female leads in One Piece. Nami is an ordinary girl with no special abilities while Robin has the ability to conjure limbs anywhere as she pleases. They are beautiful, and that’s just about it. Nami is confident and knows she’s attractive, which is probably why she often wears revealing clothes. She uses her sexiness to get things she wants. Apart from that, they have no other reason to expose that much skin, not to mention their unrealistic hourglass figure (most One Piece females have this figure).
Kayama Nemuri (Hero name: Midnight) and Yaoyorozu Momo (Hero name: Creati) are two female characters from My Hero Academia whose costumes are provocative. First of all, Yaomomo is a 16-year-old student, so her revealing costume definitely caused some concerned, raised eyebrows. However, there is a legitimate justification for the nature of both these costumes.
Yaomomo’s power allows her to create anything from her body, given that she actually understands the molecular structure of what the objects are made of. Seeing as she produces objects from her body, it’s justifiable for her to have a revealing costume (some objects are big and she needs her skin exposed to make bigger objects, or else she’ll tear her costume).
Midnight on the other hand, has the power to produce an aroma that puts people to sleep, and it works better on men, hence her X-rated costume (to seduce men). It is also mentioned that her costume is made of thin material so it would be easy for her to rip it to spread the sleep-inducing aroma. The only problem with this is that this means she would have to constantly repair her costume each time she uses her ability, which is kind of bothersome.
They both need their skin exposed in order to utilize their quirks, but between these two, Yaomomo seems to have the better costume design in terms of practicality.
Side/Background Characters
The great thing about these two animations is that they don’t neglect the side characters. Side characters are given proper backstories, interesting designs, and distinguishable personalities. The only difference about this is that My Hero Academia characters limit the deformities of the anatomy and body proportions but One Piece takes that to an extreme.
My Hero Academia characters, despite being background characters that probably would only appear in two episodes, prove to have the ability to be lovable. The artist/author is practically god when it comes to instilling life-like personalities into his characters. It makes viewers feel intrigued and wishing for certain characters to appear more.
One Piece, on the other hand, never fails to introduce a character that looks different and unique, no matter how insignificant they may be to the story. It’s almost ironic how the main characters look fairly normal compared to the side/background characters.
13.04.2020 - 13.06.2020 (Week 1 - Week 14)
Maisarah bt Muhd Zamri (0335576)
Design Research Methodology
RES60604 MIB
13.04.2020 (Week 1)
Yeah, that's probably it.
Ah, and we were told to pick a specialization already :') It's because this module is basically just a starting point for us to understand the specialization we're gonna take. We're going to do research about a specific topic that we're interested in within the specialization we picked.
Specialization I picked: Entertainment Design
Topic of interest: Character Design
20.04.2020 (Week 2)
Research Proposal draft #1
What I wanna study: (animation) Character Design
Working title: Aesthetic design over working design
Research problem: Visual representation of a character's personality/identity
Problem statement: Characters are defined by their personalities/identities. However, there are characters that are designed to look aesthetically pleasing while disregarding said character's identity. Unless the personality of the character is instilled into the character's design itself, the character would have no depth and end up being bland.
Research questions:
- Is it acceptable to design a character purely aesthetically without regarding the character's personality/identity?
- Does it matter if a character's design reflects their personality/identity or not, as long as they look interesting?
- Does instilling a character's personality into their design make them too predictable, thus uninteresting?
Research objective: To determine the importance of a working character design
Hypothesis:
- The visual design of a character has to relate to the character's personality/identity to make them more relevant.
- Aesthetic and working design are equally important to construct an engaging character
Proposal draft #1 Feedback:
- Working title can be worked on more
- Problem statement is actually the research problem
- Which means I have to make the correct problem statement
- Research questions are okay :)
- I'm guessing I need to have the same amount of objectives as my research question because it's like the expected result of the question.
- Hypothesis is... meh?
27.04.2020 (Week 3)
Research Proposal draft #2
What I wanna study: (animation) Character Design
Working Title: Aesthetic and Personality Driven Character Design
Research problem: Characters are defined by their personalities/identities. However, there are characters that are designed to look aesthetically pleasing while disregarding said character's identity. Unless the personality of the character is instilled into the character's design itself, the character would have no depth and end up being bland.
Research questions:
- Is it acceptable to design a character purely aesthetically without regarding the character's personality/identity?
- Does it matter if a character's design reflects their personality/identity or not, as long as they look interesting?
- Does instilling a character's personality into their design make them too predictable, thus uninteresting?
Research objective: - To determine the importance of a design that reflects the character's personality
- To study what makes a character's design interesting
- To study the art of instilling stereotypes into characters without making them boring
Hypothesis: Aesthetic and personality-based designs are equally important in order to construct an engaging character
Problem statement:
"A well-designed character oozes personality" (Maestri, 2006a).The personality and emotional traits of the characters involved particularly needs to be mimicked (White, 2012a). To move a story forward, archetypes are required so that the personal stories of each character can be used as their character development (Tillman, 2012a). A crucial part of coming up with an amusing and original design is the personality of the character (Al-Ali, 2019).
That's not to say there aren't any characters that are designed based on their personalities and still look uninteresting.There are characters that are designed based too tightly on the stereotypes that they are practically recycled versions of already existing character types (White, 2012b). That being said, visually engaging things are what people are often drawn to (Tillman, 2012b) so a lot of artists design characters just to produce visually pleasing illustrations without giving much thought about the character's background (Maestri, 2006b).
If a character is drawn in a way that lacks a sense of identity, the character will appear rigid (Bancroft, 2016). Viewers will lose interest if they don't associate with the character in some way (Maestri, 2006c). A character whose backstory and features are developed would be stronger and more versatile design (Tillman, 2012c). It is the artist's job to present the visual depiction of a character's ideals and thoughts on paper (Mattesi, 2012).
That's not to say there aren't any characters that are designed based on their personalities and still look uninteresting.There are characters that are designed based too tightly on the stereotypes that they are practically recycled versions of already existing character types (White, 2012b). That being said, visually engaging things are what people are often drawn to (Tillman, 2012b) so a lot of artists design characters just to produce visually pleasing illustrations without giving much thought about the character's background (Maestri, 2006b).
If a character is drawn in a way that lacks a sense of identity, the character will appear rigid (Bancroft, 2016). Viewers will lose interest if they don't associate with the character in some way (Maestri, 2006c). A character whose backstory and features are developed would be stronger and more versatile design (Tillman, 2012c). It is the artist's job to present the visual depiction of a character's ideals and thoughts on paper (Mattesi, 2012).
04.05.2020 (Week 4)
Research Proposal Slides
11.05.2020 (Week 5)
We were supposed to have at least 3 critical reviews done, but I had trouble finding articles that relate to my topic. Articles that I found mostly are about game character designs rather than animation.
18.05.2020 (Week 6)
Regarding my troubles from last week, my lecturer suggested that I use different keywords when searching for the articles to write critical reviews on.
These are the articles I have found:
These are the articles I have found:
25.05.2020 (Week 7)
Critical Reviews
I have persevered and written all 7 critical reviews in one week uwu
01.06.2020 - 08.06.2020 (Week 8 - Week 9)
Methodologies
At this point of the module, we are going to conduct our research on the topic picked. To do this, we have to choose two types of methodologies - quantitative-qualitative/quantitative-quantitative/qualitative-qualitative - and I decided to do Quantitative-Qualitative.
Observational Studies for Visual analysis
Animation - One piece vs My Hero Academia
- One Piece has a lot of characters with amazing designs that compliment the characters’ personalities/abilities
- One Piece has been animated since 1999 and has a lot of fans
- Like OP, MyHeroAcademia has a lot of characters with different abilities (they are heroes so they have costumes designed to suit their abilities)
- MyHeroAcademia has only been animated since 2016, it has gained a lot of fans because of the characters
- MyHeroAcademia characters each have their own personalities and backstories to support their becoming
- They are also two of the mainstream animations so
- I’m gonna break down how the designs of selected characters show their personalities/abilities
Characters to look at:
> Luffy (rubber ability) - OP
> Sanji (strong legs) - OP
> Usopp - OP
> Ace (fire ability) - OP
> Doflamingo (string ability) - OP
>> Deku (super strength) - MHA
>> Bakugou (explosion ability) - MHA
>> Ingenium (engine/speed ability) - MHA
>> Red Riot (hardening ability) - MHA
>> Present Mic (loud voice ability) - MHA
15.06.2020 (Week 10)
After 2 weeks, I finally managed to finalize my questionnaire :')
> What is the first thing that gets you invested in a character?
>How they look >I’d like to get to know the character first
> Is it acceptable to design a character purely aesthetically without regarding the character’s personality/identity?
>Yes >No >50/50 > Does it matter if a character’s design reflects their personality/identity or not, as long as they look interesting? Why do you think so?
>Yes >No >Reason:______
------
> In the case of One Piece, how do you feel about most of the female characters being oversexualized with no apparent reason for the way they are designed?
>Not into it >They cute so whateves
>I don’t mind since that’s how most shounen(genre) anime is > Do you feel the exaggerated features on some of the characters (who are meant to be normal people) in One Piece makes it odd or unique?
>Not gonna lie, kind of weird >It’s pretty cool, actually > Would you say One Piece leans more towards aesthetics in the way the characters are designed or the designs actually relate to how they characters act?
>They’re just nice to look at >Their designs compliments their personalities
------
> Is there a particular costume design in My Hero Academia that you feel unrelated/doesn’t help with the character’s ability/personality?
>Yes >No, they’re all good > If yes, who, and why do you think so?
>Answer:______ > The characters’ hero costumes might help with their hero works, but how do you feel about the character’s design in general (when they are living their life as civilians)?
>Actually still manages to convey their personalities >Not much to say, really > Would you say My Hero Academia leans more towards aesthetics in the way the characters are designed or the designs actually relate to how the characters act?
>They’re just nice to look at >Their designs compliment their personalities
------
> Do you prefer the exaggerated features of One Piece’s character designs or the mildly modified character design of My Hero Academia?
>One Piece >My Hero Academia > Mind giving a reason?
>I just do >Reason:______
> What is the first thing that gets you invested in a character?
>How they look >I’d like to get to know the character first
> Is it acceptable to design a character purely aesthetically without regarding the character’s personality/identity?
>Yes >No >50/50 > Does it matter if a character’s design reflects their personality/identity or not, as long as they look interesting? Why do you think so?
>Yes >No >Reason:______
------
> In the case of One Piece, how do you feel about most of the female characters being oversexualized with no apparent reason for the way they are designed?
>Not into it >They cute so whateves
>I don’t mind since that’s how most shounen(genre) anime is > Do you feel the exaggerated features on some of the characters (who are meant to be normal people) in One Piece makes it odd or unique?
>Not gonna lie, kind of weird >It’s pretty cool, actually > Would you say One Piece leans more towards aesthetics in the way the characters are designed or the designs actually relate to how they characters act?
>They’re just nice to look at >Their designs compliments their personalities
------
> Is there a particular costume design in My Hero Academia that you feel unrelated/doesn’t help with the character’s ability/personality?
>Yes >No, they’re all good > If yes, who, and why do you think so?
>Answer:______ > The characters’ hero costumes might help with their hero works, but how do you feel about the character’s design in general (when they are living their life as civilians)?
>Actually still manages to convey their personalities >Not much to say, really > Would you say My Hero Academia leans more towards aesthetics in the way the characters are designed or the designs actually relate to how the characters act?
>They’re just nice to look at >Their designs compliment their personalities
------
> Do you prefer the exaggerated features of One Piece’s character designs or the mildly modified character design of My Hero Academia?
>One Piece >My Hero Academia > Mind giving a reason?
>I just do >Reason:______
22.06.2020 (Week 11)
Character Design Breakdowns
So before doing the actual visual analysis, I decided to break down the character designs of the selected characters from the chosen animations first while waiting for more responses from my questionnaire. This is all purely from my perspective (and maybe a tiny bit influenced by what I heard people say).
So before doing the actual visual analysis, I decided to break down the character designs of the selected characters from the chosen animations first while waiting for more responses from my questionnaire. This is all purely from my perspective (and maybe a tiny bit influenced by what I heard people say).
29.06.2020 (Week 12)
Visual Analysis Draft
(btw this draft has no images as it's just a draft. I put fig 1.1, 1.2 etc so that I know where to insert the images when I do write the visual analysis for real. Also, there are changes on which character decided to do an analysis on)
“One Piece” and “My Hero Academia” are two different Japanese animations, but with similar concepts. These two animations are set in a world where people have special abilities, with some differences, of course.
The world of One Piece is as fictional as it can get, with fishmen, giants, underwater countries, sky islands, etc. And as mentioned before, there are people who possess special abilities.
Meanwhile, My Hero Academia takes place in a world where 70% of the human population possesses superpowers (quirks) that develop naturally at the average age of 5, but other than that, the universe in which the characters live in is pretty much the same as ours.
In relation to the differences in the two worlds’ settings, characters in One Piece who have special abilities maintain their original looks, while characters in My Hero Academia would sometimes have their physical appearance altered to show the abilities they possess.
(Fig 1.1 - OP devil fruit users vs BnHA peeps)
However, while My Hero Academia keeps the characters looking fairly human-like (the proportions and general appearance), One Piece takes human anatomy and just threw it into the ocean.
(Fig 1.2 - OP characters)
Main Characters
Another similarity these two animations share is how they designed their main character. Despite the crazy world these characters live in, they look borderline uninteresting compared to the exciting setting they are put into.
(Fig 2.1 - Luffy vs Deku)
Monkey D Luffy is a lanky boy who wears a simple red vest (later changed to an open, long-sleeved red cardigan) and blue shorts with cuffs along with a pair of sandals and a straw hat as the cherry on top. His simple design actually reflects his simple-minded nature. Despite looking basic as heck, his design does function well with his personality as well as his ability to stretch like rubber.
The simplicity in the way Luffy dresses reflects his background as a village boy. The sleeveless-ness and shorts gives him freedom to move without any restriction, given the fact that he makes big movements when in battle. However, after the time skip, he changed his vest to a long-sleeved cardigan, which takes away his freedom of movement. It would actually make more sense for him to go sleeveless after the time skip because he possesses abilities to inflate his limbs into bigger sizes, and the sleeves would just be in the way. Interesting fact: before the time skip, his vest has 3 buttons, and after the time skip, his cardigan has 4 buttons. This is a small detail telling us that he has leveled up some way.
Midoriya Izuku (hero name: Deku) is a timid boy who was born quirkless, but attained a quirk through the number 1 hero who passed down his super strength to him. Izuku has fluffy hair, big, round eyes, and freckles. It was mentioned by the artist/author that he was purposely designed to look plain, but these traits portray his meek and innocent personality well.
His initial hero costume doesn’t contribute much to his abilities. He had designed his costume solely based on his idol hero (the number 1 hero who gifted him the quirk he now possesses). After a few damaging fights, however, he had upgraded his costume to better suit his ability and his change of style in combat.
(Fig 2.2 - Deku’s upgrade costume)
Female Characters
When it comes to shounen anime, female characters are often over-sexualized, and One Piece and My Hero Academia aren’t innocent. One Piece has a more severe case of over-sexualizing female characters, however, because it was first published in late 70’s when female characters are mostly a tool for fan-service. My Hero Academia was serialized in mid-2014, where people are starting to be more aware of the state of society.
(Fig 3.1 - Nami/Robin vs Midnight/Yaomomo)
Nami and Robin are two female leads in One Piece. Nami is an ordinary girl with no special abilities while Robin has the ability to conjure limbs anywhere as she pleases. They are beautiful, and that’s just about it. Nami is confident and knows she’s attractive, which is probably why she often wears revealing clothes. She uses her sexiness to get things she wants. Apart from that, they have no other reason to expose that much skin, not to mention their unrealistic hourglass figure (most One Piece females have this figure).
Kayama Nemuri (Hero name: Midnight) and Yaoyorozu Momo (Hero name: Creati) are two female characters from My Hero Academia whose costumes are provocative. First of all, Yaomomo is a 16-year-old student, so her revealing costume definitely caused some concerned, raised eyebrows. However, there is a legitimate justification for the nature of both these costumes.
Yaomomo’s power allows her to create anything from her body, given that she actually understands the molecular structure of what the objects are made of. Seeing as she produces objects from her body, it’s justifiable for her to have a revealing costume (some objects are big and she needs her skin exposed to make bigger objects, or else she’ll tear her costume).
Midnight on the other hand, has the power to produce an aroma that puts people to sleep, and it works better on men, hence her X-rated costume (to seduce men). It is also mentioned that her costume is made of thin material so it would be easy for her to rip it to spread the sleep-inducing aroma. The only problem with this is that this means she would have to constantly repair her costume each time she uses her ability, which is kind of bothersome.
They both need their skin exposed in order to utilize their quirks, but between these two, Yaomomo seems to have the better costume design in terms of practicality.
Side/Background Characters
The great thing about these two animations is that they don’t neglect the side characters. Side characters are given proper backstories, interesting designs, and distinguishable personalities. The only difference about this is that My Hero Academia characters limit the deformities of the anatomy and body proportions but One Piece takes that to an extreme.
(Fig 4.1 - bg Characters)
My Hero Academia characters, despite being background characters that probably would only appear in two episodes, prove to have the ability to be lovable. The artist/author is practically god when it comes to instilling life-like personalities into his characters. It makes viewers feel intrigued and wishing for certain characters to appear more.
One Piece, on the other hand, never fails to introduce a character that looks different and unique, no matter how insignificant they may be to the story. It’s almost ironic how the main characters look fairly normal compared to the side/background characters.
06.07.2020 (Week 13)
Primary Data Collection
13.07.2020 (Week 14)
Assignment Compilation
Primary Data Collection
13.07.2020 (Week 14)
Assignment Compilation
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