Unpleasantness of animated characters corresponds to increased viewer attention to faces
Elizabeth CarterMoshe MahlerJessica Hodgins
SAP '13 Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on Applied Perception (August 2013)
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Animated characters are frequently used in television programs, movies, and video games, but relatively little is known about how their characteristics affect attention and viewer opinions. We used eyetracking and questionnaires to examine the role of visual complexity and animation style on viewing patterns and ratings of video-recorded and animated movie clips. We created videos of an actress performing and describing a series of actions with blocks. Of the videos, one set included regular HD recordings of the actress. The remaining video sets were animated using motion capture data from that actress for three characters: realistic, cartoon, and robot. Increased facial looking time correlated with unpleasantness ratings for individual characters and clips, determining that animation styles have an effect on both viewing patterns and audience members' subjective opinions of characters. In addition, the method described in this paper can expand future research on character animation.

Elizabeth Carter, Moshe Mahler, Jessica Hodgins (August 2013). Unpleasantness of animated characters corresponds to increased viewer attention to faces. SAP '13 Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on Applied Perception.

@article{Hodgins:2017:DOE,
author={ Elizabeth Carter, Moshe Mahler, Jessica Hodgins},
title={ Unpleasantness of animated characters corresponds to increased viewer attention to faces},
journal={SAP '13 Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on Applied Perception},
year={August 2013},
}