The Dimensions of Variation in Anthropomorphism

Form

Visual Appearance, Touch Sensation, Fragrance

Dynamics

Motion Quality, Speech Quality, Voice Quality

Contingency

Interacting, Timing

Putting the Uncanny Valley into pratice

During my investigate and research into the response from both live action and animation I strived to see if there could be a formula put in place as to force an emotional response to a 3d object as a similar response to human form. Using the Uncanny Valley as a drawing point I decided to create differnt types of charters that would draw from all the evidence I found.

My Dissertation will cover most of the theory and literary investigation and my Specialist and Final Major project will utilize my conclusions and research outcome to create a short animation film where the viewer will connect/interact on an emotional level with the 3d object characters as if they were human live action characters. A similar project was conducted by Brad Bird from Pixar when he was directing the Pixar animation “The Incredible” which was at the time the most successful animation to date that achieved the highest ranking and closest to achieve human like response from their audience within the graph of the uncanny valley. There has also been some failures for example The Polar Express and Beowulf where the characters form – visual appearance, touch sensation and motion quality was not human responsive and therefore there was no emotional, empathic or sorrow interaction with the audience.

More Uncanny Valley Research Videos

The Science of YouTube

We take a ride down into the Uncanny Valley and explore that familiar-yet-different feeling. See below.

Videos Exploring the Uncanny Valley

Karl F. Mac Dorman presents on the uncanny valley at the 2007 NMC Summer Conference (June 6-9, 2007, Indianapolis), hosted by the Indiana University School of Informatics. The talk introduces the uncanny valley in animation and robotics and morphing experiments. see below.