Project Background
The project seeks to examine how childhood education television programs can be adapted to fit the rapidly changing media environment in which online viewing platforms, such as YouTube, are surpassing television as children's primary choice for screen viewing. The researchers will take a children’s book written by Purdue students and make it easily accessible for children on YouTube by adapting it into an animated short. We will then observe YouTube Analytics to compare audience attention span and reach between the created video and a control video to see if children are willing to watch these more educational videos.
The Characters
As of January 22, 2020, The main characters of the story are completly modeled, textured and rigged. Below shows the concept art we were given from our client as well as images of the finished model. The narrator of the story is a new character we are developing for the video. This character will be 2D animated and appear throughout the video to ask the audience questions. We currently have some rough images of what we would like this character to look like.
Caterpillar Narrator-
The Environment
The story takes place all in one room which we have created and then separated into a few different areas to make animation easier. Currently, all environments are completely modeled, textured, and include any necessary rigs.
Streamers Scene-
Hats and Plates Scene-
Balloon Scene-
Tablet Scene-
The Animation
Below are our initial animation blockouts and renders showing the final lighting.
Bellow are rough animations of some of the scenes. These clips don't show correct lighting and use reference audio.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
We were able to work with two of the original authors, Helen Coats and Lexie Ziolkowski, and have them voice act for the main characters. With the final voice acting in place, we edited the final renders together to create the final video. An example of a final rendered scene is shown below.
Working with our research mentors, we worked to edit the video to make it the best it can be. Edits included lengthening the pauses for questions, adjusting audio, adding the opening and closing of the book at the start and end of the video, and timing issues. Below you can see the final video as well as the control video.
|
|
The Study
Using the video created and a control video provided to us, we created a survey to send to parents of young children. The survey instructs them to have their child watch both videos and rate their enjoyment for each. The survey also asks the parents to say if their child watched the whole video all the way through or became distracted. Along with these survey results we will look at the number of views and audience retention for each video by using YouTube Analytics. An image of this survey is shown below.
Using results from this survey and background research, we wrote a paper on if animated educational YouTube videos could have a home on the platform. This paper is included in the "Research" tab of this website.