I have come to the conclusion that the following aspects are what enable a character to be brought to life: the audience’s innate human nature to continuously interpret their surroundings; the character’s ability to communicate using expressions, and thus guide the audience’s own emotions; and that ultimately, the illusion of a character coming to life is a creation made by our differences. By this I mean that even though we are all born as different people, through our lives and experiences we are able to make connections with one another. Our ability to make such a connection is what also enables us to connect with the character and thus create the illusion of it as a living being.

Artefacts_1-6.pdf

http://rapidshare.com/files/381952861/Artefacts_1-6.pdf

For the last artefact, I published my survey and then tried to interpret the answers given. From the first twelve questions I highlighted comments that describe emotions or characteristic features to see the creation of a character in the minds of the observers, expanding my own perception of that process. By analysing the variety of responses that have to do with living attributes I then studied them more closely so as to have the chance to see how people project their self, creating a character to which they can relate.

Using a variety of online social networks like Twitter and Facebook and many different online forums, I created posts asking people to spare some time and directing them to the survey asking them to fill in as much as they like. I also sent a series of e-mails to friends, family and classmates asking them the same. I got 200 hits on the survey website with 15% providing complete responses. I then gathered all the answers and selected those that related to living attributes for further examination and interpretation. Through research I tried to develop an idea of the process by which people create characters through the process of anthropomorphism, the tendency to interpret things from a human point of view. It was from this angle that I interpreted the survey results. I presented the results transparently on the social networking sites and my blog, allowing not only my tutors but the respondents to question and challenge my honest interpretations. The results show my rationalisations and present points of view.

Survey Results http://rapidshare.com/files/376318453/Personal_Research_Project_Survey_Results.zip

For my fifth artefact I created and published a survey to collect data and help me understand how the information that I learnt during my research are applied in the real word. The images and their relevant questions were developed during the evolution of the illustrations. The first series of questions will help me see people’s first responses and then see if any of them describe emotions. I asked if they could describe the image using only adjectives and by using one sentence. One of the questions was related to my latest artefact that was Luxor the lamp. I want to see how many of the answers would refer to the character made by Pixar and if there are any character descriptions that will attribute to the character as Luxor rather than the lamp as an object and how. Next I created multiple choice questions about the emotional state of the characters shown in the images. While making the characters I tried not to give any specific expressions to my characters. I am interested to see if the majority of the respondents will be focusing on a specific emotion and if it reflects on what I think about the character now. For the final two questions I made a grid overlaying the Images in order to offer more specific information about how the people see the images and at the same time provide me with more detailed data. The research project and the artefacts that followed are to help me understand better my research topic. My hypothesis is that adding anthropomorphic characteristics on objects and making random deformations on the characters without having in mind giving them any emotions, will still make people interpret the facial deformations as emotions.

Link to my SURVEY

http://www.eSurveysPro.com/Survey.aspx?id=2a816af2-a665-45ea-868b-eea29046d3ea

My idea for the latest artefact was inspired by Luxo Jr, the character that

Pixar Animation Studios first created for the Siggraph exhibition in 1986.

This character has developed over the years with character properties that I Thought

I could use. For example it’s an easy character to recreate with plenty of references and simple enough to be created within my time frame, even more important is the amount of information that we have about this character from the time of its creation to the present day. We know how the object looked like before it was made into the animated character and we also know why changes where done to the original character from the articles that were published during the Siggraph exhibition of 1986.

My goal is to take the specific character and remove the small variations that were done and create the object of the Character.

I found some blue-prints of an old model of the Luxo Lamp and from those I created my characters, gave them similar colours and basically created a “lamp”.

I want to see how many people will recognise it as a “Luxo Lamp” the Pixar character and how many will see it just as a “lamp”.

The differences between them are quite obvious, but I feel that the success of the “Luxo Lamp” the Pixar “Luxo Jr.” animated character will overwhelmingly win as an image and more people will relate to that, than the alternative “lamp” .

Through my questionnaire I hope to see how differently people view my “Luxo Lamp” character, upon whether they had knowledge of “Luxo Jr.” the character that

Pixar Animation Studios first created, or Not.

Artefact 3

For my third artefact I wanted to create a realistic object that could exist in the real world in a similar form so I created a candlestick covered with melted wax. This is an object different to the other five I am making because I am not anthropomorphizing it like I do with the others. Instead I made a realistic looking object to see whether people can find animal or human like features in it on their own.

I will ask the people looking at this object to tell me where on this object they see eyes, noses or any other human or animal parts and whether they see any evidence of expression and in what form. They will be given a variety of simple shapes that will be corresponding to different parts, for example ‘O’ to describe eyes ‘X’ for the nose and many more with the option of adding their own. They will be asked to draw these shapes on the image to show me what they see. It is very important not to lead people with my questions and to see their response without guiding them. The point of the exercise is to see how much work the viewer does in the process of anthropomorphization.

While I was creating the candlestick I realized that the shadow of the object has potential to be expressive as well. Through my research I learned how important the silhouette is on an object and that while creating the character we should always be aware that the character should be recognizable from its silhouette . Therefore I made some changes and continue working with the premise that the shadow should be a part of the image and not a side effect of the more realistic nature of the render I was after. It should compliment my research enquiries.

Artefact 3

Download: Personal_Research_Project-Artifact1 pdf (presentation)

All Presentation Files

As the first artefact was based on an ordinary object, my goal for the second one, was to create something bizarre and unusual. The actual object for my research in reality plays a small part in what I am trying to achieve. As my goal is to see how the audience respond and whether they will attribute emotions or not and if there is consistency between them. What you see is a crazy wagon that seems to be part of a Wild West movie with a machine gun. I chose to create something like this because of the nature of its use is co-national, and without a driver or horses dragging it, it is useless. As it is made to kill people. I wanted to confuse the audience and try and see their responses and whether they will be able to give me a small inside in to how they interpret the characters. Though my research I came to a confusing point were the character designer makes decisions on how the character will look like and act, based on a variety of factors (ex. Personality, look and style of animation). But how the audience interprets the final result, is based on the success or failure of the designer to interpret the factors to create an appealing character. I am trying to do the opposite and give them something that looks like a character and let them create its personality, or not. I believe if I find a large enough audience that will be willing to participate in my experiment, whatever the results may be, It will give me a better inside on the development of characters. Even if the results are questionable, because of the complexity of the task and my inexperience to developed characters and my bias, it could influence the structure of the query.

The first artefact was made to be used in a later query were people will be asked to describe what type of a character they feel that the deferent variations of it have. I created these illustrations using 3ds max and Photoshop based on an ordinary object a stapler. I had no specific character personality in mind while creating my artefact but simply to use facial parts as well as changing it in to a more organic structure and see how it will be developed. I limited myself by only changing the shape and adding facial clues on my object adding more human characteristics for example limps that could be used through body language to express emotions that would create too many variables making any of my findings unreliable. Keeping in mind that I have these two limitations of what I can do to my artefacts (objects) I intent to create a variety of characters to be used to gather information and then try to see where it leads me. My hopes are that the last character will seem to be just another one of my artefacts but in reality the expressions will be to express specific emotions and see if the audience can identify them. I hope to show that by imputing facial parts as well as giving it a more organic look help the audience to connect with the character in some way and then express what emotions they attribute to the character. I am interested to see if people see emotions express by the character and most importantly if these emotions are constant from person to person.