Development of a 2D Animated Short Film on School Bullying Using Rigging and Tweening: A Descriptive Evaluation of Audience Perceptions

Abstrak

This study reports the development of Phantom, a two-dimensional (2D) animated short film that addresses school bullying through a character-centred narrative and examines viewers’ perceptions of its moral message and entertainment value. The production process followed the Multimedia Development Life Cycle (MDLC), comprising concept development, design, material collection, assembly, testing, and distribution. Character sketches and storyboards were prepared before character assets were rigged and animated using keyframes and tweening in Moho. The completed film has a duration of 7 minutes and 36 seconds and was exported in MP4 format at 1920 × 1080 resolution with a 16:9 aspect ratio. Audience evaluation involved 50 viewers who completed a 10-item, five-point Likert questionnaire. The overall weighted score was 2,167 out of 2,500, equivalent to 86.68%. The source manuscript also reports separate scores for moral-message perception and entertainment; recalculation of these subscale scores depends on confirming the original questionnaire’s item-to-dimension mapping, which was not provided. The overall result indicates favourable self-reported audience perceptions. It does not establish changes in bullying knowledge, attitudes, or behaviour because the study did not report a pre-test/post-test design or a comparison group. The study contributes a documented 2D animation production workflow and preliminary descriptive evidence of audience reception. Further research should validate the questionnaire and use a stronger evaluation design to determine whether the film produces measurable educational outcomes.