Shengyi CHEN

Date of Award

6-2022

Advisor(s)

Jingjing MA

Second Advisor

Yilu ZHOU

Third Advisor

Li ZHANG

Abstract

Since 2010, online video platforms and computer animation technologies have been developing at an accelerated speed around the world. More and more animation works were produced by computers and then broadcast through new media, especially the online video platforms. With the help of computer technologies and the promotional effect of new media platforms, animation, a traditional art form, is gaining popularity among the youth around the world.

At the same time, animation producers often face a very real and challenging task – to decide whether to invest money in an animation program only with the script, a crude character design, and an overall budget. In the face of such limited information, making major investment decisions poses financial risks to the company. An animation work’s value can be evaluated in two scopes: the commercial value which can be reflected by view counts and the artistic value which can be reflected by its ratings. As big data analysis has become a rather mature anticipative tool, no matter which production stage an animation work is at, producers now can evaluate its commercial value and artistic value and the predictions can be very close to the result. By making predictions with the help of big data analysis, producers can greatly reduce the risk of investing in crude work and help the work gain popularity.

From the perspective of the development of the global animation industry, this research describes the development status and future of the industry. In particular, this research summarizes the development status and characteristics of China’s animation industry and concludes that the current vigorous development of China's animation industry comes from government support, the development of animation production technology and emerging online media, and the strong purchasing power of China's young groups.

The data sample in the quantitative research comes from one of the largest online video broadcasting platforms in China, whose anime channel can be representative in telling the overall characteristics of Chinese animation viewers and their preferences for animation works. Therefore, this study collects and analyzes all the data concerning its animations, summarizes the main influencing factors that affect the view counts and ratings, and draws a portrait of the Chinese animation audience.

The theoretical contribution of this research is that first, by summarizing the existing domestic and international animation theories, this research finds that the external conditions of traditional animation theories have fundamentally changed with the advancement of technology and the development of the Internet. Therefore, modern animation theories need to keep pace with the times. Second, this research innovatively conducts quantitative research on the factors that affect the popularity of animations. In addition, it is for the first time that a comprehensive quantitative study has been done by using all the animation program data broadcast by a Chinese video platform. Last but not least, this research also includes a quantitative study on the portraits of the Chinese animation audience.

The practical contribution of this study is that, firstly, through quantitative research on large-scale data of animations, this research found the influencing factors that affect the popularity of animations. Secondly, through the portrait analysis, this research recognizes gamers, housewives, and fashion icons to be the main audience of animations. Thirdly, by conducting data analysis, this research finds that family and comedy animations have a high view counts. Fourthly, this study adopts a variety of research methods, including sentiment analysis, descriptive analysis, correlation analysis, multiple linear regression analysis, and cluster analysis. This research concludes that these analysis methods can yield the most accurate result which is in line with practical observations when they are used in combination.

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