*Only a little time was allotted to animation this week as I had to complete my thesis outline and spent a lot of time reviewing materials.
Previs class note:
This week, as I didn’t go to class due to illness, my teacher didn’t check my homework, nor did I have any feedback. Still, I completed the requirements that my teacher mentioned last time and drew a lot of 2D illustrations. Then I merged them into the animation using AE, which makes it easier for the audience to understand what the animation bubbles are saying.
Apart from that, I was also wondering if I could use one of my other character designs to make up a story that could be animated.
Illustrations appearing in the protagonist’s idea bubble：
This is the animation after changing all the animation issues from last week.：
Mechanical arm class note:
Last week I finished drawing the texture of the robotic arm and tried to render it. This week I linked the texture to the model and adjusted different properties for each material. Finally, I added HDIR to the robotic arm as ambient light. To simulate my In the stairwell where the video was shot, I especially found a room with similar cement walls as the light source.
As I expected, the rendered shell looks like tungsten steel. I like this texture very much. It looks like light blue self-illumination. Especially tech-savvy.
All the texture:
Connected in Maya:
After experimenting several times, I found an apparent difference between the Arnold rendering and the substance painter rendering, the same material rendered differently, so I changed some of the data in Maya based on this：
Render in Maya:
I prefer Cel-shading animations, so this rendering is just right for me.
HDRI: This unfinished studio, I think, is very close to the stairwell where I took the video
Render in Maya (without light) :
（My sentiment is that it’s really cool, and I super like it! ）
I learned a lot of new things this time, and rigging has never been an area of expertise for me. Still, it was very satisfying to get the model rigged and moving, so in conclusion, although I had many technical problems, I am still pleased with the design and the rendering.
Draft thesis:
This week we have added an assignment where we need to prepare a title and a draft for our thesis. I have been reviewing a lot of information and organizing what I need so far, writing a rough structure for my thesis, and stating what I want to write about. This thesis will deepen my understanding of animation and body language and help me to make exciting and flexible animations.
The interpretation of emotion by body language – the way emotion influences character animation
Keywords.
Expression of emotion, body language, character personality, animation interest, Exaggerated dynamics
Hypothetical question:
Character animations are influenced by emotions through the character’s body language
Abstract:
This essay intends to investigate the effect of body language on the expression of emotion in characters and the enhancement of the overall character animation fun. I will argue and examine credible sources of information to find out how emotion affects character animation through character body language.
Introduction:
This essay will examine why character animation needs emotion; the link between human body language and emotion; the need for body language in animation; the reasons for human body language; body language and human body structure; the link between character personality and body language and finally non-physical body shape-shifting and exaggerated approaches to body language in animation. The main question at the heart of this is how emotion influences character animation. I hypothesize that emotion is influenced by a great deal of body language and is a necessary expression in character animation. The ways and types of expression are then part of what we will explore. I plan to delve into how body language is produced and used in animation to enrich my understanding of animation. Expressive body language is integral to emotional expression in animation.
Literature review:
In the current study, Dahle’s 2019 paper nicely supports part of the argument about body language (Dahle, 2019), where Dahle argues that body language is strongly linked to culture, examining how Western and East Asian cultures use and perceive body language by comparing Eastern and Western 3D characters. He illustrates through comparative experiments that body language can express emotions. He also suggests two types of body language: acquired and instinctive, with acquired body language being more personal and culturally influenced. He also mentions Disney’s 12 principles of animation.
However, This paper needs to add more comparison experiments, as body language can vary greatly depending on age.
In Larsson’s paper (2014), we can learn most of the well-established ideas about body language and the role of body language and the argument that emotions are shown through body language in animation, stating that 93% of human communication is made up of body language, that facial expressions are also a form of body language. Larsson believed body language makes characters more flexible. The subjects in the thesis do not have facial animation, which would make body language beyond the face even more important. This experiment argues for the importance of body language in animation and how it can be expressed in theory.
This paper also states that if character animation needs to be made more realistic, animators must understand emotions and how to express them. (Larsson, 2014) However, body language has very many specifics. At the end of the paper, Larsson also mentions that if more complex body language expressions are needed, then greater experimentation and further research are needed.
Regarding the classification of the emotions expressed, Ennis et al., in their 2013 paper and experiments, have shown that different emotions are shown differently through body language in character animation, with the most expressive being anger, followed by happiness, fear, and sadness, while this paper also compares the gender difference and finds that male characters are not as accurate in portraying emotions as female characters in terms of the expressiveness of body language for both genders. The paper also compares gender differences in body language expression, finding that male characters are less accurate than female characters in portraying emotions and less physically expressive than female characters (Ennis. et al., 2013). This paper is very informative in confirming the link between body language and gender. However, Motion capture technology in 2013 was less advanced than in modern times, so their access to resources and information was limited.
Body language is an expression of emotion, and in the paper published by Zibrek et al., which explores the use of body language by robots to express gender and emotion and uses some psychological theories to mimic human experiments, the study also shows that people can recognize gender from body movements and that stereotypes of emotional expression can influence perceptions, thus showing that perceptions of body movements are also popular and prevalent ( Zibrek, 2015)
In addition, body language is said to be a human trait, as only humans have such a wide range of emotions. In their 2017 paper, Aulia and Aditya analyzed the body language of non-human species. The study concludes that if interesting, accessible, and understandable characters are to be designed, it is necessary to combine the characteristics of the species with human body language, thus demonstrating that body language is also common to non-human characters. (Aulia and Aditya, 2017) However, this paper is limited to rats, and more examples of non-human characters using human body language are needed to make a stronger case for using human body language.
Logical thinking: emotional expression is significant for animation. The primary way to express emotion is through language, and body language is also an integral part of animation and how emotion affects animation body language.
Main article.
The connection between body language and human emotion → Methods of interpreting emotion
Understanding of body language → Scientific classification of body language and some basic concepts
The need for emotion in character animation → Why body language is needed in animation →
The production of exaggerated body language → The impact of some exaggerated body language on character animation → Evidence of the importance of body language in animation.
Conclusion:
Emotion is an essential element for animation, and body language is a very important way for emotion to be expressed so that emotion can have a significant impact on energy through methods such as xxxxxxxxxx of body language.
Bibliography:
Alves, A.C. (2017) 3D character animation using sign language, Guide books. Available at: https://dl.acm.org/doi/book/10.5555/AAI29139195 (Accessed: February 28, 2023).
Aulia, E. and Aditya, C. (2017) “Panawa” Animation Movement Design: Rat character with human …, “Panawa” animation movement design: Rat character with human personality. IEEE. Available at: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/8266053 (Accessed: March 2, 2023).
Beck, A. et al. (2012) Emotional body language displayed by artificial agents, University of Hertfordshire. Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). Available at: https://researchprofiles.herts.ac.uk/en/publications/emotional-body-language-displayed-by-artificial-agents (Accessed: March 2, 2023).
Buisine, S. et al. (2014) [PDF] the role of body postures in the recognition of emotions in contextually rich scenarios: Semantic scholar, International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction. Available at: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/The-Role-of-Body-Postures-in-the-Recognition-of-in-Buisine-Courgeon/726fe9544b2e28133d32bc8fdcd967c1e6f89524 (Accessed: March 2, 2023).
Dahle, T. (2019) Culture and 3D animation: A study of how culture and body language affects the perception of animated 3D characters, DIVA. Available at: https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2%3A1328360&dswid=-1363 (Accessed: March 2, 2023).
Ennis, C. et al. (2013) Emotion Capture: Emotionally Expressive Characters for Games. Association for Computing Machinery New York, NY, United States. Available at: https://dl-acm-org.arts.idm.oclc.org/doi/10.1145/2522628.2522633 (Accessed: March 2, 2023).
Larsson, P. (2014) Discerning emotion through movement: A study of body language in portraying emotion in animation, DIVA. Available at: https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2%3A723103&dswid=2002 (Accessed: March 2, 2023).
McGill, J. (2021) Finding personality in animation, Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University. East Tennessee State University. Available at: https://dc.etsu.edu/honors/642/ (Accessed: March 2, 2023).
Mourot, L. et al. (2021) A Survey on Deep Learning for Skeleton-Based Human Animation, Computer Graphics Forum. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/cgf.14426 (Accessed: March 2, 2023).
Schindler, K., Gool, L.V. and Gelder, B.de (2008) Recognizing emotions expressed by body pose: A biologically inspired neural model, Redirecting. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neunet.2008.05.0033 (Accessed: March 2, 2023).
Volume 21, Issue 9, November 2008, Pages 1238-1246
Thaler, A. et al. (2020) Attractiveness and Confidence in Walking Style of Male and Female Virtual Characters. IEEE. Available at: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9090610/ (Accessed: February 28, 2023).
Thomas, S. et al. (2022) Investigating how speech and animation realism influence the perceived personality of virtual characters and agents. IEEE. Available at: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9756815 (Accessed: March 2, 2023).
Zibrek, K. et al. (2015) Exploring the effect of motion type and emotions on the perception of gender in virtual humans, ACM Transactions on Applied Perception. Association for Computing Machinery New York, NY, United States. Available at: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2767130 (Accessed: March 2, 2023).
Zong, M., Qi, Z. and Zong, Z. (2020) Research on character expression shaping in animation movies, Research on Character Expression Shaping in Animation Movies | Atlantis Press. Atlantis Press. Available at: https://www.atlantis-press.com/proceedings/iccese-20/125937024 (Accessed: March 2, 2023).