Thesis ideas and proposal structure

thesis structure:

  • title page and cover
  • abstract: an indication of what it is that what I am going to investigating, searching into.
  • acknowledgments.
  • contest page: number to each chapter
  • introduction: more detailed
  • literature review
  • themed topic chapters
  • results
  • discussion or findings
  • conclusions
  • your publications
  • references
  • appendices

What is the goal of a research proposal?

The goal is to present the author’s plan fort the research you intend to conduct. Research proposal follow the same structure.

Determine how and why your research is relevant to the field.

  • Filling a gap in the existing body of research on their subject
  • underscoring existing research on their subject, and/or
  • Adding new, original knowledge to the academic community’s existing understanding of their subject

the research proposal also mush explain the following:

  • the research methodology you plan to use
  • the tools and procedures to use to collect, analyse and interpret the data you collect (survey, questionnaire, interviews to directors or peers, reviewing academic texts)

How long should a research proposal be?

Few pages long.A research proposal’s goal is to clearly outline exactly what your research will entail and accomplish, so including the proposal’s word count or page count is not as important as it is to ensure tax all the necessary elements and content are present.

Structure research proposal

All research proposal include the following sections:

  • Introduction where you introduce your topic; state the statement and questions your research aims to answer; and also provides context for your research. It should be concise, in some cases you need to include an abstract and or a table of contents before the introduction
  • Background significance where you explain why your research is necessary and how it relates to established research in your field. your work might complement existing research, strengthen it, or even challenge it. This is also the section where you clearly define the existing problems your research will address. By doing this, you are explaining why your work is necessary (“so what” question). You also outline how you will conduct your research. If necessary, note which related questions and issues you won’t be covering in your research.
  • Literature review you introduce all the sources you plan to use in your research including landmark studies and their data, books and scholarly articles. A literature review deletes into the collection of sources you chosen explains how you are using them in your research.
  • Research design, methods, and schedule including your research plan. The type of research you will do: are you conducting qualitative or quantitative research? are you collecting original data or working with data collected by other researches?. Is this an experimental, correlational or descriptive research. how you are using the collected data and which are they? or even the tools you will use to collect those data. there should also be included the research timeline, the research budget and any potential obstacles you foresee and your plan for handling them.
  • Supposition and implications you should be going into the project with a clear idea of how your work will contribute to your field. this section expresses exactly why your research is necessary. Also any ways your work can challenge existing theories and assumptions in your field; how your work will create the foundation for future research; the practical value your findings will provide to practitioners, educators and other academics in your field; the problems your work can potentially help to fix; policies that could be impacted by your findings; how your findings can be implemented in academia or other settings and how this will improve or otherwise transform these settings. This section is where you stay how your findings will be valuable.
  • Conclusion briefly summarises your research proposal and reinforces your research’s stated purpose
  • Bibliography list of sources and their authors

How to write your research proposal?

Formal objective tone. Being concise is a key components. Present your research proposal in a clear and logical way.

Editing and proofreading a research proposal is also an important step

When you are writing a research proposal avoid these:

  • being too wordy, be more economic with the words.
  • fail to cite relevant sources
  • focusing too much on minor issues; cover only the major, key issues you aim to tackle in your proposal
  • Failing to make a strong argument for you research; research proposal is a piece of persuasive writing which means that although you are presenting your proposal in an objective, academic way, the goal is to get the reader to say “yes” to your work.
  • polish your writing into a stellar proposal

Thesis ideas planning

Considering the developments I had in my two projects planning and my FMP ideas I had considered to create I came up with two possible areas of research for my Thesis:

2D an d 3D: Hybrid Animation:

Paperman workflow with meander animation
‘Jing Hua’ watercolor animation style.

I am very fond of 2D animation however I do understand that 3D animation is more advanced and full of possibilities. What I liked about the Disney short “Paperman” is how it blends traditional animation and computer animation. They meander animation. Meander started development in 2010 as a stand-alone vector/raster hybrid animation system with the primary goal of bringing the power of digital tools to hand-drawn animation. Although originally targeting 2D cleanup animation, it was designed to be general enough for use throughout all departments in the studio. On the other hand ‘Jing Hua’ skilfully invokes the beauty of Chinese watercolour in the animation where they projected on 3D models watercolour brush strokes.

This two beautiful hybrid of hand-drawn and CG animations were very inspiring to me and made me reflect of adding them into the FMP short animation I intend to develop where the main character would “enter” into a Van Gogh painting (which is where I intend to use this type of animation). Regarding my thesis I though I could research into 2D and 3D animation and the techniques developed to blend them together.

Anthropomorphism In Character Animation

The second Thesis idea concept originated from the two project I am currently working on for the advanced 3D module in term 2: one project focus on a human character animation and the second on a cat character animation. So, I figured that I could carry a research on the differences between human and animals animation in films both from a movement point of view that from an emotion perspective. Moreover I could use the two animation I have created as a practical example.