Learning to read body language is something we do throughout our whole life. It is a complex non-verbal language that can express more than words. In this study we investigate the possibility to use only body language to portray emotions to the viewer. In a background of a game project we have used a character that has his face covered, therefore, facial expression is not visible during the online survey, which we used as a method for our investigation. As a foundation we have created four character animations to portray anger, frustration, exhaustion and hurt. To find the answer if it is possible to recognize those five emotions in the character animations survey, participants were obligated to name the emotion expressed on each of the video clips. The results of this study show that the characters body language could be sufficient to portray those five emotions. However, it was concluded that body language could be enough to represent the character's emotional state to the viewer; but by including facial expressions we could help to portray the emotion even further.

Thesis advisor: Peter Kreeft / Thomas Aquinas is generally viewed as the chief proponent of the theory of delayed animation, the view that the human embryo does not at first have the rational soul proper to human beings. Thomas follows Aristotle's embryology, in which an embryo is animated by a succession of souls. The first is a nutritive soul, having the powers of growth, nutrition, and generation. The second is a sensitive soul, having the additional powers of locomotion and sensing. The third and final soul is the human, or rational soul, which virtually includes the nutritive and sensitive souls. Because Thomas holds that there is only one substantial form of a composite, none of these forms overlap to provide continuity. It is therefore exceedingly difficult to speak of the embryo as one enduring subject through the succession of souls. Moreover, because of the way that the nutritive soul is associated with plants, and the sensitive soul is associated with animals, interpreters generally hold that for Thomas the embryo is first a plant, then an animal, and with the advent of the rational soul, finally a human being. Those who write about the ontological status of the embryo assume that delayed animation necessarily entails delayed hominization, that is, that the embryo only becomes human at a later stage of its development, when it receives the rational soul. Those who hold a delayed animation view of the embryo often invoke Thomas' schedule of successive souls in the embryo as a model for viewing it as not yet human in early stages of development, linking hominization to the ability to perform intellectual operations. That Thomas specifies that a body must be sufficiently organized before the advent of the rational soul seems to them to solidify their view of the embryo as not sufficiently organized to be truly human. Additionally, even outside of an explicitly Thomist framework, Thomist metaphysical principles are often invoked in arguments that center on twinning and totipotency of blastomeres in the early embryo, and whether that early embryo is one individual if it is potentially many. Those who hold immediate animation views (i.e., the embryo receives the rational soul at once, with no mediate states) often adopt the strategy of importing modern data on the internal organization and self-directed development of the embryo, and argue that if only Thomas had known that the zygote was not unformed and undifferentiated, that it has within itself all it needs to become a mature adult human, he would have held that the embryo is immediately suited to receive the rational soul, and thus is human from conception. In this way they attempt to employ a change in scientific data to negate the need for a succession of forms in the embryo. The author identifies the being of the human embryo as a prior metaphysical problem within Thomas' work, and advances a different interpretation of his views: that the embryo, even before the advent of the rational soul, is human. To establish this claim, she traces the problems which emerge in the current debate about when the embryo becomes human, and argues that contrary to expectation, it is not necessary to equate immediate rational animation with immediate hominization, demonstrating that all other approaches yield results entirely untenable for Thomas. A survey of texts reveals that Thomas did in fact view the embryo as human before the rational soul, though he does not methodically work out the implications of that view in a number of areas. Moreover, a distinction based on a passage in Aristotle's Generation of Animals with regard to an additional meaning of generation may resolve the ambivalence in Thomas' account of the embryo as passive under the formative power of the father's semen. Finally, a third meaning of generation is offered to show that Thomas recognized and wished to resolve the difficulty of explaining the continuity and identify of the embryo in the succession of souls. What results is an immediate hominization view of the embryo that, because it accommodates Thomas' succession of souls and does not depend upon importing modern biological data on the embryo, is consistent with Thomas' account, and is thoroughly cognizant of the way Thomas viewed human nature and the final end of human being. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2013. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Philosophy.

Animations in the game industry are considered a bottleneck today, and a way to speed up the development in this area is by letting the computer procedurally generate the animations. This research has explored blending physics with keyframed animations in games, to create interactive and responsive characters, and to find out how these animations are perceived by players. This way of animating characters in real time has lately been used in a blossoming game genre called fumblecore. By letting physics do part of animation in real time, unpredictable and unique animations can be created. Two demos of a fumblecore game was created and tested on players with various gaming backgrounds. One had a traditional keyframed animation, and the other had a physically-blended animation. The results showed that the majority of participants of the study preferred the physically-blended animation over the traditionally keyframed one.

張詠思. / "2012年1月". / "2012 nian 1 yue". / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2012. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 144-152). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstract in Chinese and English. / Zhang Yongsi.

The human face is a fascinating, but extremely complex object; the research project described is concerned with the computer generation and animation of faces. However, the age old captivation with the face transforms into a major obstacle when creating synthetic faces. The face and head are the most visible attributes of a person. We master the skills of recognising faces and interpreting facial movement at a very early age. As a result, we are likely to notice the smallest deviation from our concept of how a face should appear and behave. Computer animation in general, is often perceived to be ``wooden' and very ``rigid'; the aim is therefore to provide facilities for the generation of believable faces and convincing facial movement. The major issues addressed within the project concern the modelling of a large variety of faces and their animation. Computer modelling of arbitrary faces is an area that has received relatively little attention in comparison with the animation of faces. Another problem that has been considered is that of providing the user with adequate and effective control over the modelling and animation of the face. The Facial Animation, Construction and Editing System or FACES was conceived as a system for investigating these issues. A promising approach is to look a little deeper than the surface of the skin. A three-layer anatomical model of the head, which incorporates bone, muscle, skin and surface features, has been developed. As well as serving as a foundation which integrates all the facilities available within FACES, the advantage of the model is that it allows differing strategies to be used for modelling and animation. FACES is an interactive system, which helps with both the generation and animation of faces, while hiding the structural complexities of the face from the user. The software consists of four sub-systems; CONSTRUCT and MODIFY cater for modelling functionality, while ANIMATE allows animation sequences to be generated and RENDER provides for shading and motion evaluation.

The purpose of this study is to explore the influence of history and culture on the passage of the comic book to the animated film. Although the comic book has both historical and cultural components, the latter often undergoes a cultural shift in the animation process. Using the Smurfs as a case study, this investigation first reviews existing literature pertaining to the comic book as an art form, the influence of history and culture on Smurf story plots, and the translation of the comic book into a moving picture. This study then utilizes authentic documents and interviews to analyze the perceptions of success and failure in the transformation of the Smurf comic book into animation: concluding that original meaning is often altered in the translation to meet the criteria of cultural relevance for the new audiences.

L'animation est« l'art de se servir des interstices invisibles entre les images». Le cinéaste Norman McLaren souligne ici que la construction du mouvement dépend d'une pratique du dessin de recherche, dont n'est restituée à l'écran que la forme aboutie. Une réflexion s'engage au sujet des processus créatifs d'un cinéma d'animation « d'atelier », fondé sur une démarche expérimentale. Ouvert lors de la réalisation de chaque photogramme, « l'interstice invisible » désigne le chantier de création dans lequel la pratique artistique et le développement filmique sont interrogés. Durant la réalisation, les cinéastes plasticiens font régulièrement « l'expérience de l'interstice » en questionnant leurs dess(e)ins. De nouvelles formes visuelles et narratives peuvent émerger d'une telle démarche, qui favorise les tensions dialectiques tout en encourageant les lignes d'invention : le fixe rencontre l'animé, la fiction se mêle au scénario poïétique et les supports s'entrelacent. Une poétique de la tresse se construit alors. Cette thèse propose de caractériser et de raconter le parcours de recherche du cinéaste plasticien, ainsi que de définir sa ligne de conduite. Il s'agira d'identifier les formes tressées qu'il élabore, jusqu'à émettre des propositions conceptuelles, telles que des « illustrations filmées » ou des matières «ectoplastiques ». Le cinéma d'animation plasticien pourra être défini à cette occasion autour d'une pensée du «tiers» ou du « dehors ». La thèse adopte une ligne de création-recherche, fondée sur des relations entre théorie et pratique, qui favorisent le croisement d'expériences artistiques et d'exercices de pensée. / Animation is «the art of manipulating the invisible interstices that lie between frames». Animator Norman McLaren explains that building movement depends on a research practice, that we can only see the result on screen. An experimental cinema can be defined from his comment. The « invisible interstice » opens with the creation of each new image, and so does the creative disorder, that goes along with questioning the artistic practice and the film development. During production, animators experiment the interstice. New narrative and visual forms can emerge from such an approach, which stimulates dialogues and invention : fixed pictures meet moving pictures, fiction crosses creative development, and media interlace. A poetic of the braid builds itself. This PhD proposes to characterise and tell the creator's explorative journey, and to define his process. We will identify the enlaced forms he creates, and we will propose concepts such as « filmed illustrations » and «ectoplastic» material. Experimental cinema will be defined as a « third » or an « out » cinema. This PhD adopts a line of creation and research, based on a continuous relationship between artistic experiences and theory.

A Research Report submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirement for the Degree of Masters of Arts in Digital Animation at the University of the Witwatersrand (School of Digital Arts) Johannesburg, South Africa / In recent years, the quest for capturing authentic emotion convincingly in computer generated (CG) characters to assist exceedingly complex narrative expressions in modern cinema has intensified. Conveying human emotion in a digital human-like character is widely accepted to be the most challenging and elusive task for even the most skilled animators. Contemporary filmmakers have increasingly looked to complex digital tools that essentially manipulate the visual design of cinema through innovative techniques to reach levels of undetectable integration of CG characters. In trying to assess how modern cinema is pursuing the realistic integration of CG human-like characters in digital film with frenetic interest despite the risk of box office failure associated with the uncanny valley, this report focuses on the progress of the advances in the technique of facial motion capture. The uncanny valley hypothesis, based on a theory by Sigmund Freud, was coined in 1970 by Japanese robotics professor, Masahiro Mori. Mori suggested that people are increasingly comfortable with robots the more human-like they appear, but only up to a point. At that turning point, when the robot becomes too human-like, it arouses feelings of repulsion. When movement is added to this equation, viewers’ sense of the uncanny is heightened when the movement is deemed to be unreal. Motion capture is the technique of mimicking and capturing realistic movement by utilising technology that enables the process of translating a live actor’s performance into a digital performance. By capturing and transferring the data collected from sensors placed on a body suit or tracked from a high definition video, computer artists are able to drive the movement of a corresponding CG character in a 3-Dimensional (3D) programme. The attention of this study is narrowed to the progress of the techniques developed during a prolific decade for facial motion capture in particular. Regardless of the conflicting discourse surrounding the use of motion capture technology, these phenomenal improvements have allowed filmmakers to overcome that aspect of the uncanny valley associated with detecting realistic movement and facial expression. The progress of facial motion capture is investigated through the lens of selected films released during the period of 2001 to 2012. The two case studies, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008) and Avatar (2009) were chosen for their individual achievement and innovative techniques that introduced new methods of facial capture. Digital images are said to undermine the reality status of cinematic images by challenging the foundation of long held theories of cinematic realist theory. These theories rooted in the indexical basis of photography, have proved to be the origin of contemporary viewers' notion of cinematic realism. However, the relationship between advanced digital effects and modern cinematic realism has created a perceptual complexity that warrants closer scrutiny. In addressing the paradoxical effect that photo-real cinematic realism is having on the basic comprehension of realism in film, the history of the seminal claims made by recognized realist film theorists is briefly examined.

Reconstruire, synthétiser, analyser et réutiliser les formes dynamiques capturées depuis le monde en mouvement est un défi récent qui reste encore en suspens. Dans cette thèse, nous abordons le problème de l'extraction, l'acquisition et la réutilisation d'une paramétrisation non-rigide pour l'animation basée vidéo. L'objectif principal étant de préserver les propriétés globales et locales de la surface capturée sans squelette articulé, grâce à un nombre limité de paramètres contrôlables, flexibles et réutilisables. Pour résoudre ce problème, nous nous appuyons sur une réduction de dimensions détachée de la surface reposant sur le paradigme de la représentation par cage. En conséquence, nous démontrons la force d'un sous-espace de la forme d'une cage géométrique pour encoder des surfaces fortement non-rigides. / Reconstructing, synthesizing, analyzing to re-using dynamic shapes that are captured from the real-world in motion isa recent and outstanding challenge. Nowadays, highly-detailed animations of live-actor performances are increasinglyeasier to acquire and 3D Video has reached considerable attention in visual media production. In this thesis, we addressthe problem of extracting or acquiring and then reusing non-rigid parametrization for video-based animations. At firstsight, a crucial challenge is to reproduce plausible boneless deformations while preserving global and local capturedproperties of the surface with a limited number of controllable, flexible and reusable parameters. To solve this challenge,we directly rely on a skin-detached dimension reduction thanks to the well-known cage-based paradigm. Indeed, to thebest of our knowledge, this dissertation opens the field of cage-based performance capture. First, we achieve ScalableInverse Cage-based Modeling by transposing the inverse kinematics paradigm on surfaces. To do this, we introduce acage inversion process with user-specified screen-space constraints. Secondly, we convert non-rigid animated surfacesinto a sequence of estimated optimal cage parameters via a process of Cage-based Animation Conversion. Building onthis reskinning procedure, we also develop a well-formed Animation Cartoonization algorithm for multi-view data in termof cage-based surface exaggeration and video-based appearance stylization. Thirdly, motivated by the relaxation of priorknowledge on the data, we propose a promising unsupervised approach to perform Iterative Cage-based GeometricRegistration. This novel registration scheme deals with reconstructed target point clouds obtained from multi-view videorecording, in conjunction with a static and wrinkled template mesh. Above all, we demonstrate the strength of cage-basedsubspaces in order to reparametrize highly non-rigid dynamic surfaces, without the need of secondary deformations. Inaddition, we state and discuss conclusions and several limitations of our cage-based strategies applied to life-like dynamicsurfaces, captured for vision-oriented applications. Finally, a variety of potential directions and open suggestions for furtherwork are outlined.

This research assesses the skills and knowledge necessary for the creation of animation in the 3D computer medium. It responds to the argument that students of this new form of animation must learn to apply principles and theories of animation that had their genesis in the early years of traditional, hand-drawn animation (Kroyer, 2002). Many industry notables argue for the use of traditional animation principles in 3D computer animation. John Lasseter, executive vice president at Pixar studios in the United States, represents one such example. He states that 'These principles were developed to make animation, especially character animation, more realistic and entertaining. These principles can and should be applied to 3D computer animation' (Lasseter 1987). The importance of animation principles in all animation mediums is stressed by Oscar-winning traditional animator Gene Deitch. He states that 'Every animated film made today uses those same basic principles developed at the Walt Disney studios during the 1930s. They still apply, no matter which technology is used' (2001). This research report examines the validity of this argument and identifies the tools, principles, and procedures that professional 3D animators are using. Central to this research is the dynamic of the contemporary relevance of traditional animation as an aesthetic, craft and economic entity. Most importantly this research considers how that dynamic might translate into the teaching of 3D animation courses. It is claimed that the findings of this research benefits 3D animation teachers, students, and those who employ them. To conduct on-site research with professional animators, this study enlisted the participation of a small number of animation studios in south-east Queensland, Australia by ensuring the protection of their Intellectual Property. Close observation of their working practices was made and numerous secondary sources of information (3D animation tutorials, books, DVDs, software manuals etc.) examined in order to locate the tools, processes, and principles that CG animators engaged. The findings were applied and critically assessed by means of a practical project (a seven-minute 3D-animated film) which was created concurrently with the research. Recommendations were formulated as to the most useful tools, processes, and principles for the student of computer animation by way of a revision of the existing Queensland College of Art syllabus for teaching computing animation. What follows is an account of the development and context of the project, the research methods applied, and critical analyses of the findings. The research concludes that it is necessary and advantageous to apply traditional animation skills to 3D computer work.