The master’s thesis I am evaluating is called „An investigation of Realism in Animation“ by Dott. ssa Flavia Montecchi. The thesis was supervised by Mag. Dr. Claus Tieber, Privatdozent.
She submitted it in 2020 at the university of Vienna to obtain the title Master of Arts (MA).
(1) Level of design
The layout of the thesis follows the guidelines of the university and shows no additional effort, the author had to put into layouting the work.
The text is easy to read with a fair size of the font as well as enough line height.
However, I sometimes find the use of the photographs in layouts following university guidelines difficult. The lack of space between the pictures and the text has a negative effect on the layout. Other than that, I can’t find any negative points regarding that matter.
(2) Degree of innovation
I find the degree of innovation in Flavia Montecchi’s thesis to be high due to her contributions to the fields of animation studies and cinematic realism.
She bridges diverse fields, such as animation studies as well as film theory. She also uses case studies.
Her comparative analysis of “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” and Sam Raimi’s “Spider-Man Trilogy” highlights the techniques each medium uses to establish realism. This methodology demonstrates how animated realism has evolved to parallel cinematic realism while still respecting animation’s unique qualities, such as exaggeration for narrative or comedic effects.
Montecchi’s discussion of animation’s use of „codes of realism“ like the realism of motion and psychological continuity offers a framework that future studies can apply to other works. This theoretical approach allows animation realism to be studied in its own right, not merely as an offshoot of film realism.
(3) Independence
Montecchi combines ideas from cinematic realism, animation studies, and psychology to argue that animated realism has its own unique methods, separate from the photographic focus of live-action film. She compares the techniques used in „Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse“ and the live-action „Spider-Man trilogy“ to show how each medium, animation as well as live-action, uses different approaches to make their worlds feel believable. This comparison highlights her independent approach by emphasizing the unique strengths of both art forms.
(4) Outline and structure
The work seems well structured and is divided into three chapters.
Realism in Live-Action Cinema: Discusses various forms of realism, including naturalism, social realism, and photorealism, within the historical context of film theory.
Realism in Animation: Examines animated realism through theories on hyperrealism and perceptual realism, focusing on techniques that support believability.
Film Analysis: Compares the Spider-Verse and Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy, analyzing how each of them uses realism.
The table of contents is laid out logically and makes it easy to see through the structure of the work and follow the thoughts of the author.
(5) Degree of communication
I find the level of communication to be high. Montecchi uses clear language that bridges theoretical complexity with practical insights. The structure is well-organized, with subheadings and summaries that guide the reader through each part of the thesis. She provides a valuable resource for students in animation and media studies.
(6) Scope of the work
The scope of „An Investigation of Realism in Animation“ is interdisciplinary. She draws on film theory, animation studies and film analysis to find out how realism can be achieved with animation in real films. Her research contextualizes realism in animation in comparison to traditional film realism.
The thesis integrates technical and narrative aspects of realism in animation, expanding beyond traditional views of realism as inherently photographic.
(7) Orthography and accuracy
Unfortunately, when reading the german abstract, it is noticeable that this part of the text has not been corrected. In some cases, the chosen words do not seem appropriate compared to the english abstract. In addition, there were grammatical errors and colloquial expressions. I could not detect these errors in the rest of the work (written in English). I assume that these errors occurred due to a different native language. Regarding spelling and accuracy, the rest of the work seems thoughtful and error-free.
(8) Literature
I noticed that the bibliography has been divided into books and online sources. I don’t know what citation system the work is structured under, but I think it is unusual for the bibliography to be structured in this way also with citation rules other than those of our institute. The sources used seem to be either current (important in terms of online sources) or appropriate to the time the author is writing about. Perhaps the work would have benefited from the use of additional sources. It is 132 pages long, including the title page and table of contents. However, the bibliography, excluding the online sources came to only one and a half pages. This seems a bit too few for such an extensive master’s thesis.
