For myself, audience demographics is a very important part to animation. Audience demographics allow movies to fit a target audience and make sure audiences are happy are targeted correctly. A film always has an age rating and sometimes it is a lot more necessary than you'd think. For example a lot of people think animations to be films designed for children, they'd be correct, but also wrong. They are created to appeal to children but end up addressing families and often include crude humour, references or subliminal messaging. Some cartoons on the other hand ie. Sausage Party are very much intended to fit an older audience over 18...
At the start of October I created a survey asking people their age, gender and animation movie preferences. Amazingly I received 584 responses total after my auntie shared it online. As amazing as this is it also caused a problem, she shared it with an all female Disney group. Before she shared I had 200 responses with 52% being female and 48% being male.
35% being aged 18-30, 30% aged 12-18, 20% aged 30-50, 10% above 50 and 5% below 12. This is the information I will be going off as it is the fairest average. All other categories are opinion based so I will count all votes to see which animation style is preferred and use this to reach a wider audience. Including the votes after the spike we have... 74% Female, 24% Male, 1 % Prefer Not To Say and 1% Trans Male. Of this 53% were aged 30-50, 18% were aged 12-18, 16% aged 18-30, 10% 50 and above and 3% were aged 12 and below. In terms of age all my projects should be all age appropriate as my data for children is not enough. I personally don't have any friends below 12 and those who filled it in were close friends and family. An animation is seen to be child friendly and especially as a student who cant really age restrict it is best for myself and others to keep projects PG adding the occasionally innuendo that would slip a kids mind, like many large studios do.
Below are the graphs for the rest of the questions, to which I will use the full results. Annoyingly some people decided not to fill in every question so some questions have 580 responses and some 584 etc. All the questions were single choice so the answers were the preferred choice of the viewer, even though the viewer may have multiple choices.
At the start of October I created a survey asking people their age, gender and animation movie preferences. Amazingly I received 584 responses total after my auntie shared it online. As amazing as this is it also caused a problem, she shared it with an all female Disney group. Before she shared I had 200 responses with 52% being female and 48% being male.
35% being aged 18-30, 30% aged 12-18, 20% aged 30-50, 10% above 50 and 5% below 12. This is the information I will be going off as it is the fairest average. All other categories are opinion based so I will count all votes to see which animation style is preferred and use this to reach a wider audience. Including the votes after the spike we have... 74% Female, 24% Male, 1 % Prefer Not To Say and 1% Trans Male. Of this 53% were aged 30-50, 18% were aged 12-18, 16% aged 18-30, 10% 50 and above and 3% were aged 12 and below. In terms of age all my projects should be all age appropriate as my data for children is not enough. I personally don't have any friends below 12 and those who filled it in were close friends and family. An animation is seen to be child friendly and especially as a student who cant really age restrict it is best for myself and others to keep projects PG adding the occasionally innuendo that would slip a kids mind, like many large studios do.
Below are the graphs for the rest of the questions, to which I will use the full results. Annoyingly some people decided not to fill in every question so some questions have 580 responses and some 584 etc. All the questions were single choice so the answers were the preferred choice of the viewer, even though the viewer may have multiple choices.
I included this section to gage the thoughts on the animation industry and use it as an easy ice breaker. The lower votes tended to be my friends or people who don't enjoy animation as they see it to be childish or boring etc. For the most part, as stated by the graph, animations are enjoyed.
This question was to try and determine how actively the community watches animation films. This ended with 70% of the audience watching animation within the last day or week, meaning animation is a form or media people watch often. Even those who who watch monthly are still fans, whether it be Toy Story or Shrek. This would show studios that they would receive an active viewing and fan base and the animation genre as a whole is doing well.
I created this question to try and understand what sort of stories, characters and animation styles audiences liked. Disney has a very noticeable style, big eyes, wacky etc. Pixar have a more realistic and visually stunning style but still keep to the cartoon aspect of animation. Illumination has a very cartoon like appearance and they like to over exaggerate features, i.e. Gru is tall and has long limbs, unnatural but shows his dominance and the buildings in A Secret Life Of Pets are huge, showing the small scale of the animals. Disney and Pixar smashed the other studios but I think this is due to the sheer popularity of their films. Disney films are renowned to be incredible so they tend to take preference over other studios. Unless you are into animation and explore the industry you may not tend to watch things like Studio Gibli or Sony as they are not as advertised by the media. Audiences also tend to use Disney characters as their "Favourites" when asked. The other answers not seen are all just variations of all of the above.
This section really helps me understand what I am trying to create. The chart shows people love the stories and the characters rather than the emotions they give off. Therefore if I were to create a Funny, Heart Warming film with a seriously strong story and loveable character I should be ok! A character is the first thing an audience sees. On the posters, trailers and even in most films. If you have a weak character with no meaning, backstory or motive then its pointless. The same goes for a story. One needs to properly structure a film script, just like a story. A beginning, a problem, a middle, an over come, a climax and an end. All key elements of a successful film. Thanks to the chart I know creating a good story and character is key. It will allow audiences to be gripped and want them to continue, just like reading books. If its not interesting they put the book down. Story and Character development will be the main focus for my projects.
This section allowed me to understand where one would view an animation. It is clear to see that the straight to DVD release is no longer the way to do things and its not a smart idea. Instead all other options seem a better way of doing it. No one wanted to watch a film at the cinema only so I have taken that option out of the equation. The two largest brackets were at the cinema then at home and at home in general. If it were me I would follow this chart, have a cinema release then release online services to se popularity, if need be I would then do a DVD release but in 2020 with the pandemic and the rising technology DVDs are becoming less and less popular. Especially due to Disney + and Netflix. I could also upload on platforms like YouTube.
This last question was to gage who the audience watches films with. The sections came out pretty even really other than Family, as expected winning by aa landslide. This shows animations tend to be family films and are suitable for all ages. I will create my animations with this in mind.