Character Animation Research Articles

2D Animation Character Design for Sang Penunggu Bulan Folk Tales from West Java

Indonesia is rich in folklore from various provinces. One of these provinces is the province of West Java which is rich in folklore. However, among the folklore in the province of West Java, the fairy tale Nyi Anteh Sang Penunggu Bulan is still little known to the wider public, especially children. Folklore of Sang Penunggu Bulan should be introduced to children from an early age. Folklore characters do show compassion which is useful as a means of education and introspection in children. For example, the character Nyi Anteh has a very good personality. All the goodness contained in the character of Nyi Anteh can be presented to children in an interesting way thanks to information technology. One information technology that is currently developing rapidly and is able to attract the attention and interaction of people who see it is the field of 2D animation. The research method used is descriptive by collecting data through literature to describe the pre-production, production, and post-production stages. With animation, things that are difficult to express in words will become simple and easy to understand when listening to animated video content. Therefore, it is necessary to design a 2D animated character for Nyi Anteh that can convey the personality and traits inherent in Nyi Anteh through her facial expressions and body movements, so that she can be a role model for good behavior for children to follow every day.

Domestication Western-Style: Fantasies of Harmony and the Violence of Plasticity in Mary O’Hara’s My Friend Flicka

ABSTRACT Historically, animal characters and animal-child encounters in children’s narratives have served largely metaphorical functions. More recently, scholars have become interested in exploring literary human-animal relations as interesting in and of themselves and not purely as background for promoting values and attitudes considered desirable for adolescent readers. The article proposes a reading of Mary O’Hara’s novel My Friend Flicka (O’Hara 1941) which embeds the relationship between the human protagonist and the horse in the wider stories of equine domestication and the settling of the Western frontier. In effect, while the story of Ken and Flicka is read as a metaphor – a synecdoche even – it is not a metaphor of human-human encounters but of the contradictions and ethical dilemmas inherent to the process of human-directed animal domestication in a capitalist settler colonial society. Ken’s coming of age through the story of love and loss is representative of dilemmas that humans engaged in processes of domestication have had to grapple with: Ken must come to terms with the violence of domestication. Concurrently, Flicka’s story of pain, fear, and love is read not just as the unique story of an individual horse but of the generations of equines that have been forced to adapt to an environment shaped by human dominance.

Research on the Application of Traditional Chinese Artistic Modeling Elements in Animated Character Design

The traditional artistic modeling elements of China are rich and colorful. Their application in animated character design not only highlights the distinctive features of traditional artistic modeling elements but also promotes China's excellent traditional culture. This paper mainly discusses in detail the measures of applying traditional Chinese artistic modeling elements to animated character design. Animation character designers can pay attention to the reasonable application of traditional Chinese artistic modeling elements against the background of new media, highlighting traditional literature, fine arts, and philosophy in the design process. Only by doing this can diverse artistic forms be reflected through animated characters, making the design more valuable and promoting sustainable development of China's traditional animation industry.

Character Creating Process and Meaning of 'GWK' FFI 2015 Animation as Preservation of Balinese Mythology

The GWK (Garuda Wisnu Kencana) animation tells the story of the adventures of a magical boy named Garuda in obtaining Tirta Amerta (water of life) belonging to Lord Vishnu to free his mother who is held hostage by a magical grandmother named Kadru, the animation that can be watched at GWK Bali Cultural Park won the Citra trophy in the animation category in 2015. The purpose of this research is to explain: 1. The process of GWK character creation, 2. The meaning of the animated character characterized by Balinese mythology. The results showed that the process of creating Garuda Wisnu Kencana animation consisted of several stages which were quite a long process, starting from pre-production, production to post-production and screening until now as in 2023 at GWK cultural park, Uluwatu, Bali. The type of work is 3D animation with a duration of 34 minutes, telling the story of the little Garuda adventure in getting tirta amerta (water of life) belonging to Lord Vishnu to free his mother from the hostage taken by the witch Kadru. The meaning that can be explained from this creation is the meaning of creativity, the meaning of preservation, the meaning of national identity. The finding of this research is that the production process of Garuda Wisnu Kencana animation consists of several stages that are quite long, starting from pre-production. The conclusion of this research is that the process of creating GWK requires collaborative work with high standards and can be a promotion and preservation of Balinese culture.
 Keywords: best animation; FFI; 2015; GWK; character; balinese; mythology.

Film and TV Character Expression Identification Combined with Deep Learning and Automatic Generation of Character Animation

Film and TV Character Expression Identification Combined with Deep Learning and Automatic Generation of Character Animation

Modular Bodies of Animated Characters and Posthumanist Connotations. Translation into Russian

This article discusses the molecularization of the body and the meanings pointed out via cyborg bodies in the context of animated characters. We analyze films of Ghost in the Shell (Mamoru Oshii, 1995), Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045- Sustainable War (Shinji Aramaki Michihito and Fujii Kenji Kamiyama, 2021), Gunnm (Hiroshi Fukutomi, 1993), and Alita: Battle Angel (Robert Rodriguez, 2019) in the context of related philosophical discussions. We carry out the discussion about the body on two axes. First, we examine forms of presenting the modular bodies and discuss their socio-cultural connections. In these narratives, the evolution of the body beyond organic boundaries transforms it into a space where the character reflects the subjectivity and a tool that offers a narcissistic experience of omnipotence regarding bodily strength and competence. However, it sometimes causes the characters to become alienated from their bodies and engage in existential inquiries. Thus, secondly, we examine the existential inquiries/crises of the characters arising from the modularization of their bodies and the philosophical connotations that these emphases indicate. If on this axis, posthumanist arguments that stand out with objections to Cartesian distinctions such as machine-human, mind-body, woman-man, and anthropocentric approaches constitute the focus of the discussions.

A network approach to the investigation of childhood irritability: probing frustration using social stimuli.

Self-regulation in early childhood develops within a social context. Variations in such development can be attributed to inter-individual behavioral differences, which can be captured both as facets of temperament and across a normal:abnormal dimensional spectrum. With increasing emphasis on irritability as a robust early-life transdiagnostic indicator of broad psychopathological risk, linkage to neural mechanisms is imperative. Currently, there is inconsistency in the identification of neural circuits that underlie irritability in children, especially in social contexts. This study aimed to address this gap by utilizing a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) paradigm to investigate pediatric anger/frustration using social stimuli. Seventy-three children (M = 6 years, SD = 0.565) were recruited from a larger longitudinal study on irritability development. Caregivers completed questionnaires assessing irritable temperament and clinical symptoms of irritability. Children participated in a frustration task during fMRI scanning that was designed to induce frustration through loss of a desired prize to an animated character. Data were analyzed using both general linear modeling (GLM) and independent components analysis (ICA) and examined from the temperament and clinical perspectives. ICA results uncovered an overarching network structure above and beyond what was revealed by traditional GLM analyses. Results showed that greater temperamental irritability was associated with significantly diminished spatial extent of activation and low-frequency power in a network comprised of the posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) and the precuneus (p < .05, FDR-corrected). However, greater severity along the spectrum of clinical expression of irritability was associated with significantly increased extent and intensity of spatial activation as well as low- and high-frequency neural signal power in the right caudate (p < .05, FDR-corrected). Our findings point to specific neural circuitry underlying pediatric irritability in the context of frustration using social stimuli. Results suggest that a deliberate focus on the construction of network-based neurodevelopmental profiles and social interaction along the normal:abnormal irritability spectrum is warranted to further identify comprehensive transdiagnostic substrates of the irritability.

The bias on characters’ visual traits in Japanese animation and the misconceived “transnationality” of anime

In the dynamics centred on East Asian cultural output, a special place is occupied by Japan’s production (namely, comics and animation, or manga and anime respectively) and the distribution and widespread consumption of this vast output around the world. &#x0D; Despite the interpolations many anime series or films faced when exported, a specificity of the medium was/is usually recognised by foreign audiences. However, issues often unfold in the reception of anime’s visual codes, which entail problematical aspects in the grasping of the narratives and an underlying dimension of what I shall here call “graphic politics”. Today, the visual-narrative logics of anime characters’ physiognomies, and therefore, the motivations and intentions of their creators, are still largely misinterpreted based on culturally-inflected interpretations; this gives us clues on what the audiences of anime are, what they expect and draw from anime’s stories, and what this means for a global politics of anime as a medium of expression and a creative output. In this article, through the description of visual examples and established, or, at times controversial, scholarship in the field, I discuss the persistence of wide misunderstandings in the cultural politics of anime’s design and its impact on the reception of anime’s intentions globally.&#x0D; Among the collateral effects of this misunderstanding, a technical and moral justification to call (or imply as) “anime” animations designed and produced outside of Japan by non-Japanese authors seems to be emerging in the global discourse, thus privileging a fabricated idea of anime as just a “form” over anime as also and mainly a Japanese cultural artefact, in a momentous process of progressive dilution of the Japan-embedded characteristics of the animations made in Japan.

Light image enhancement based on embedded image system application in animated character images

Light image enhancement based on embedded image system application in animated character images

Simplified Physical Model‐based Balance‐preserving Motion Re‐targeting for Physical Simulation

AbstractIn this study, we propose a novel motion re‐targeting framework that provides natural motions of target robot character models similar to the given source motions of a different skeletal structure. The natural target motion requires satisfying kinematic constraints to show a similar motion to the source motion although the kinematical structure between the source and the target character models differ from each other. Simultaneously, the target motion should maintain physically plausible features such as keeping the balance of the target character model. To handle the issue, we utilize a simple physics model (an inverted‐pendulum‐on‐a‐cart model) during the motion re‐targeting process. By interpreting the source motion's balancing property via the pendulum model, the target motion inherits the balancing property of the source motion. The inheritance is derived by performing the motion analysis to extract the necessary parameters for re‐targeting the pendulum model's motion pattern and parameter learning to estimate the suitable parameters for the target character model. Based on the simple physics inheritance, the proposed framework provides balance‐preserving target motions, even applicable to the full‐body physics simulation or a real robot control. We validate the framework by experimenting with motion re‐targeting from animal character and human character source models to the quadruped‐ and humanoid‐type target models with Muaythai punching, kicking and walking motions. We also implement comparisons with the existing methods to clarify the enhancement.

Development of Platformer Game “Adventure Drake” Using Finite State Machine Method

Video game is one of the most popular hobbies out there, someone who have been played games always ended with fun experience and adrenaline rush. The people who enjoy this type of hobby so diverse starring with kids, teenager, and adult. With increasing technology playing game is not exclusive on desktop pc or game console, but now can be play on smartphone with android and IOS system operations, so they can play game wherever they want, and whenever they want. For that reason, the author with interested in designing game with the platformer genre using 2D technology and using finite state machine for controlling character animation Therefore author make research platformer game adventure drake using finite state machine, the itself game can be played by anytime at anywhere. The main reason to building this game therefore adding onto the collection Indonesia game’s and analyses the game with implementing finite state machine method. The result from building this game is great, the game success implementing both 2D technology and finite state machine.

Animation Character Generation and Optimization Algorithm Based on Computer Aided Design and Virtual Reality

Animation Character Generation and Optimization Algorithm Based on Computer Aided Design and Virtual Reality

Generative AI Processes for 2D Platformer Game Character Design and Animation

AI has the potential to revolutionize the time-consuming and technically complex process of 2D animation production. This paper specifically focuses on creating 2D character animations for platformer games using AI. While AI has made significant contributions to video animations, its application in 2D gaming animation is largely unexplored. Existing AI applications for animation mostly target video animations and lack effective control over randomness. Therefore, this paper explores the role of generative AI in 2D gaming animation, from character design to full animation. Software tools like ChatGPT, Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, and Unity are used to streamline the production process. The research aims to investigate the feasibility and potential of generative AI, with a focus on controlling randomness. By leveraging the unique features of each software, the study aims to enhance the production of 2D game animations. The final output will be an animated character in the Idle state, showcasing the potential of generative AI in 2D gaming animation.

Design and Implementation of Puzzle Adventure Game Based on Unity

With the progress of Gaming industry, the classic genre Puzzle adventure games, due to their friendly difficulty level, low learning curve, and interesting game mechanics, have been favored by a large number of players. This paper follows the guiding principles of software engineering and game development, designs and implements an adventure puzzle game using the Unity game engine. The game design is carried out through multiple aspects such as game art style, plot, sound effects, and game puzzles to provide players with an interesting gameplay experience. For the implementation part of the game, various plugins and functions of the Unity engine are integrated to complete the development of the game system, such as using Unitys navigation system to bake navigation meshes and implement automatic pathfinding for game characters. The animation state machine is used to arrange and control game character animations, and the Unity event system is used to implement click-based interactive functions in the game. At the same time, optimization was carried out based on the test results, improving the experience of user interface and the stability of game program, further enhancing the players gameplay experience. Finally, players can experience thrilling adventure in a mysterious world, and achieve a sense of accomplishment by solving puzzles and overcoming obstacles.

Going beyond Chat: Designing Connotative Meaningful Line Stickers to Promote Road Safety in Thailand through Participatory Design

Road accidents are a leading cause of death in Thailand, with increasing fatalities. Despite road safety campaigns during holidays, consistent communication is lacking in daily life. This research aimed to create Line application stickers, a top chat platform for Thailand, using the participatory design (PD) approach. PD was implemented in two steps. Firstly, 100 participants outlined character types, moods, tones, and communication objectives. They recommended lively animal characters with diverse texts, such as greetings, work, travel, and emotions. Then, through a focus group, the tortoise was identified to represent cautious drivers who follow traffic rules, the rabbit to represent fast and risky drivers, and the zebra to represent vigilant and disciplined traffic police officers as characters for Line stickers. Subsequently, using the semiotics approach, 40 Line stickers were designed, and embedded with denotative and connotative road safety messages. Secondly, feedback from the focus group, integral to the PD process, led to refinements. After launching, a survey of 50 users showed “Benefits Received”, “Text and Messages”, and “Meaning” dimensions received “Very Satisfied/Strongly Agree” ratings. The “Character” dimension received a “Satisfied” rating. The results for “Benefits Received” can also be analyzed in the context of the Knowledge, Attitude, and Practice (KAP) theory, which revealed that K and A were at the highest level, while P was at a high level. This suggests that the Line stickers designed in this study effectively conveyed road safety messages to the receivers. This research constitutes the pioneering exploration within the realm of Line stickers concerning road safety, signifying the originality and unique contribution of our research to the existing body of knowledge in this domain. The PD process in this research can serve as a guideline for creating safety-promoting media in diverse fields.

Object Motion Guided Human Motion Synthesis

Modeling human behaviors in contextual environments has a wide range of applications in character animation, embodied AI, VR/AR, and robotics. In real-world scenarios, humans frequently interact with the environment and manipulate various objects to complete daily tasks. In this work, we study the problem of full-body human motion synthesis for the manipulation of large-sized objects. We propose Object MOtion guided human MOtion synthesis (OMOMO), a conditional diffusion framework that can generate full-body manipulation behaviors from only the object motion. Since naively applying diffusion models fails to precisely enforce contact constraints between the hands and the object, OMOMO learns two separate denoising processes to first predict hand positions from object motion and subsequently synthesize full-body poses based on the predicted hand positions. By employing the hand positions as an intermediate representation between the two denoising processes, we can explicitly enforce contact constraints, resulting in more physically plausible manipulation motions. With the learned model, we develop a novel system that captures full-body human manipulation motions by simply attaching a smartphone to the object being manipulated. Through extensive experiments, we demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed pipeline and its ability to generalize to unseen objects. Additionally, as high-quality human-object interaction datasets are scarce, we collect a large-scale dataset consisting of 3D object geometry, object motion, and human motion. Our dataset contains human-object interaction motion for 15 objects, with a total duration of approximately 10 hours.

Decaf: Monocular Deformation Capture for Face and Hand Interactions

Existing methods for 3D tracking from monocular RGB videos predominantly consider articulated and rigid objects ( e.g. , two hands or humans interacting with rigid environments). Modelling dense non-rigid object deformations in this setting ( e.g. when hands are interacting with a face), remained largely unaddressed so far, although such effects can improve the realism of the downstream applications such as AR/VR, 3D virtual avatar communications, and character animations. This is due to the severe ill-posedness of the monocular view setting and the associated challenges ( e.g. , in acquiring a dataset for training and evaluation or obtaining the reasonable non-uniform stiffness of the deformable object). While it is possible to naïvely track multiple non-rigid objects independently using 3D templates or parametric 3D models, such an approach would suffer from multiple artefacts in the resulting 3D estimates such as depth ambiguity, unnatural intra-object collisions and missing or implausible deformations. Hence, this paper introduces the first method that addresses the fundamental challenges depicted above and that allows tracking human hands interacting with human faces in 3D from single monocular RGB videos. We model hands as articulated objects inducing non-rigid face deformations during an active interaction. Our method relies on a new hand-face motion and interaction capture dataset with realistic face deformations acquired with a markerless multi-view camera system. As a pivotal step in its creation, we process the reconstructed raw 3D shapes with position-based dynamics and an approach for non-uniform stiffness estimation of the head tissues, which results in plausible annotations of the surface deformations, hand-face contact regions and head-hand positions. At the core of our neural approach are a variational auto-encoder supplying the hand-face depth prior and modules that guide the 3D tracking by estimating the contacts and the deformations. Our final 3D hand and face reconstructions are realistic and more plausible compared to several baselines applicable in our setting, both quantitatively and qualitatively. https://vcai.mpi-inf.mpg.de/projects/Decaf

A Study on the Influence of the 8th Century A.D. Image of Feitian in the Mogao Caves on the Character Design of Modern Chinese Films

The Dunhuang cave community represented by the Mogao Grottoes is the most dazzling historical legacy of the development of the Silk Road civilization, and the murals in the Dunhuang caves are the “witnesses” of the development of human civilization, the crystallization of the convergence and integration of ancient Chinese civilization and world civilization, and the valuable heritage of the Chinese nation. The art of Dunhuang murals has further developed and changed through different epochs and cultural fusions, and the contemporary interpretation and innovation of its aesthetic concepts, artistic styles, and cultural values have become particularly important and valuable. In the context of artistic creation in the eighth century A.D., this study examines in-depth the stylistic characteristics of the Flying Sky image in the Mogao Grottoes; using methods such as observation, investigation, analysis, etc., and through the study and research on the styling of modern animation characters, it is found that the copying of the ancient art can not realize its maximum value, and that the traditional art can be inherited in a revolutionary way by disseminating it through the medium of modern media.

Abstract B146: Development of PRANA: Portal for Research, Analysis and traiNing of breAthing

Abstract Cancer survivorship is a challenging path involving symptoms that afflict both the physical and emotional aspects of life. Cancer survivors are increasingly adopting to newer tools that could be potentially beneficial in symptom relief. One such approach is yogic breathing, a set of breathing practices from the yoga tradition and can be a powerful tool to address both the mind and the body. Breathing regulation is a common technique in several cultures and practices and known to improve wellbeing. While mind-body practices are common among cancer patients, African American cancer patients have low accessibility to these tools although they are open to adopt these lifestyle practices. Our previous studies have shown salivary biomarker changes, and emotional improvement such as reduced stress in response to breathing exercises. We use these breathing exercises in a lodging facility (Hope Lodge) for cancer patients and caregivers during the treatment period. To improve the treatment delivery for remote learning in a culturally acceptable manner we are creating a web portal (named PRANA, meaning vital energy; and an acronym for Portal for Research, Analysis, and traiNing of breAthing) that will house several breathing exercises that would allow participants to choose depending upon their current state of mind and body. The Prana portal will be useful in delivering breathing exercises to patients from remote areas and places where yogic breathing is not provided commonly. We have created the alpha version of the animation characters, exercise scripts, and voiceover. Their cultural suitability is analyzed within the research group and by working with the Participant Engagement Groups (PEGS) through the South Carolina Clinical and Translational Research Institute. These animations will be constructed into a web portal for beta testing and will be available to present at this AACR meeting. Owing to the tailored nature of the practice, this tool will be acceptable by a large proportion of African American cancer survivors. Additionally, the portal would be a resource for researchers that are interested in studying individual breathing exercises. Citation Format: Sundaravadivel Balasubramanian, Crystal Nixon, Katharine R. Sterba, Graham W. Warren. Development of PRANA: Portal for Research, Analysis and traiNing of breAthing [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 16th AACR Conference on the Science of Cancer Health Disparities in Racial/Ethnic Minorities and the Medically Underserved; 2023 Sep 29-Oct 2;Orlando, FL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2023;32(12 Suppl):Abstract nr B146.

What gender are the animal characters in the illustrations? Gender stereotyping by children in early childhood

ABSTRACT The aim of this study was to examine gender stereotyping by pre-school children in selecting a picture book cover and assigning gender to animal characters in illustrations. We aimed to explore which gender children would assign to bear characters, when these are portrayed in different more or less gender stereotyped activities, occupations or emotional states. Furthermore, we analysed the criteria on which the children based their decision. The sample included 71 children aged 5–6 years. The findings showed that children’s selection of their favourite cover was consistent with gender stereotypes; most children picked the cover stereotypical of their gender. Similarly, the children’s assigning of gender to bear characters was consistent with gender stereotypes as well. The criteria they used when determining gender of a bear character could be categorized into three broader categories referring to the appearance of the bears; colours used and gender roles present in child’s environment.