The creative process, journey to first animation

Abstract

Bo’s First Robot is a short animation about robot builder named Bo. It’s a japanese style robot animation set in cyberpunk-based world. The animation is the empirical part of this thesis. Animation formed during Pixstories academical minor and exchange period in animation department of Tamabi University in Tokyo. Because the topic of the animation was developed for over two years and the production took over six months to finish, it was only logical to make it the focus of the master thesis.

Empirical part of the thesis covers the evolution of the animation and how different ideas were abandoned while working on topic. The storyboard of Bo’s First Robot is compared against animatic scetch and the final animation.

Theoretical part of the thesis focuses on the creative process. It studies how Bo’s First Robot was made and the reasons why it took two years to complete. Main sources for research were Irwin Singer’s book Modes of creativity in which the creative process is studied and M.D Vernon’s book Human Motivation, which explains how motivation can effect our work.