Research

Character Animation & Human Emotions

The human body is an extraordinarily complex organism comprised of bone, muscle and nervous systems which as a whole allow it to function. Human emotions are portrayed through body language to dictate a person's character, situation or mood. Due to the sheer number of different human emotions the aim of this initial research was to basically determine several activities which clearly express a mixture of human behaviours which would be ideal to represent via a 3D Animation.

Several ideas that immediately came to mind consisted of sporting activities, as these are an ideal example involving a large degree of movements in addition to interaction with other humans displaying various emotions.

Ice Skating is a well known Olympic Sport involving individuals, pairs or groups of skaters who perform a routine of footwork, jumps and spins which is scored by a board of judges during official competitions. This activity combines intricate movement at varying speeds in addition to specific facial emotions to represent the mood of the performance which is usually supported by similar themed orchestral music. This sport therefore provides the opportunity to display a number of complex movements and facial expressions to replicate using 3D Animation Software such as 3DS Max.

Emotive Ice Skating Example

Another more extreme sport such as Sky Diving for example involves less movement of the human body yet exposes a mixed array of human emotions ranging from excitement, anxiety and fear. These human emotions are symbolized through a number of characteristics and facial expressions which provide an excellent opportunity to be mimicked through 3D animation.

Tandem SkyDive

 

Another activity that would be ideal to represent through 3D animation is the profession of a Musical Conductor. A Conductor is responsible for directing a musical performance using a complex variety of hand gestures aided with a wooden conducting baton. This baton is commonly painted white so that it is clearly visible to the watching orchestral members, choirs and bands. A Conductor often shows vigoruous facial emotion to emphasize their hand gestures according to the temp and dynamics of the music. This combination of fast and intricate hand gestures paired with the conductor’s facial expression presents a unique challenge in terms of 3D animation. Below is a video demonstrating the actions of a typical conductor.

Expressive Conductor