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My initial idea for the character design for the 3D motion captured part of the artifact was to have a non-human 3D mesh.8 _{I specifically wanted to draw the viewer (and myself) away from}

making assumptions from or becoming distracted by a semi-realistic human mesh. However, there would be difficulties inherent in the overall approach. Much of the emotion of the piece would be heard in the voiceover. Honess Roe notes that the “non-conventional relationship between image and reality in animated documentary also places greater emphasis on the soundtrack” (2013, p.2). She points out that “The pairing of typical documentary sound, such as didactic voice-of-God narration or recordings of interviews, and animated images makes for an interesting combination that questions the way meaning is conveyed in animated documentary” (2013, p.2). The “voice of the interviewee takes on additional significance when their face and body remains hidden” (2013, p.79) forcing the viewer to pick up more cues from emotion within the voice with the resulting animation encouraging “questions regarding the status of the interviewee and of the relationship between reality and what is seen on screen” (2013, p.79). This could be problematic in the context of my piece. However, it should be stressed that the animated approach of much of the artifact would not be divorcing body and face from the voiceover.9 _{In the case of the use of motion capture, the OEB would be unchanged, digitally} linked to the movements of the speaker, though the skin and build of the character might differ from the original speaker. Likewise, the rotoscoped sections would attempt to follow closely to the facial expressions of the speaker, heightening and emphasizing the motions rather than

8 _{See fig 3.10 for an illustration of what a 3D mesh looks like.}

9 _{Refer to chapter 6.5 for further discussion of the role of the voice in regard to the concept of the acousmêtre (Chion,}

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reimagining them. Chapters 6 and 7 will discuss the reaction of the practitioner researcher and a small test group of viewers to the more abstracted freeform animation part of the artifact, where the animation deliberately steps away from close “copying” of the original motions and body and facial movements of the speaker. Within this chapter, it is important to acknowledge the role that the voice plays in the perception of the motion captured animation. Honess Roe describes the powerful and important role that animation plays, how it has “long been used in non-fictional contexts to illustrate, clarify and emphasise” (2013, p.1) and it is this aspect of the role of animation that I will be focusing on through this practice as research journey. However, a more full analysis of the role of the voice (specifically) remains beyond the scope of this chapter, which focuses more upon the preliminary work of creating the first iteration of the artifact. A further discussion of the role of voice within animation, as connected to the context of the artifact as a whole can be found in chapter 6.5.

Thus, by its very nature, the motion capture data transposed into a computer generated character would be focusing on the movements of the body specifically, not facial movements, and any attempt to realize a realistic 3D human character would inevitably risk falling into the Uncanny Valley (Mori 1970) as the face would be mask-like and immobile (though the head might well move). Tinwell and Grimshaw ran experiments comparing user reactions to three types of character: realistic, stylized and extremely simplistic, with participants asked to rate on a scale of 1 to 10 of satisfaction of these characters. They concluded,

“For a user to find a video game character satisfactory within the context of a game it is not necessary for the character to have a photo-realistic human-like appearance. A character should evoke a greater sense of familiarity as opposed to eeriness unless they are intended to evoke fear such as a zombie for the horror game genre.”

(Tinwell and Grimshaw, 2009a, p.631)

Conversely, she found that over simplistic characters, such as a chatbot, were rated more unsatisfactory, or even irritating or confusing (2009), thus while my character was not intended

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as an interactive or game avatar, a happy medium of stylized but not too simplistic design was required.

There would be a risk that I and my viewers would become too distracted by the mask-like, static face to the detriment of observing the body movements, and so it would be better to move down Mori’s continuum into the realm of anthropomorphic or stylized characters, so my initial thought was to use a crocodile or lizard character design; reptiles having a solid skull and jaw that would not be expected or capable of facial expression, but would emphasize head

movements and tilts with a long snout. It was important to avoid (if at all possible) any viewer unease derived from a character attempting to be too human in looks. Tinwell and Grimshaw note that cartoon characters, by virtue of making no attempt to “fool” the viewer into thinking they are human, are able to sidestep this cognitive dissonance to a certain extent (2009a).

Fig 3.6: Blue-tongued skink10 _{(author’s own photography)}

Fig 3.7: Sketch study of an Argentinian Tegu (author’s own artwork)

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I chose a T-Rex style character because the old-fashioned upright pose of the early reconstructions of these creatures would allow me to distort the character into a human-like posture in order to fit exactly with the motion captured data (modern paleontology tends to reconstruct T-Rex dinosaurs with their bodies projected forwards). It was important that the character be stylized and non-human enough to be released from the sort of highly realistic rendering that I would not have access to for this project, but also to not in any way distort the purity of the motion captured footage, for example, no bones from the motion-captured footage could be distorted, shortened or lengthened to fit the character design (such as the short arms of a genuine T-Rex creature). Rather the character had to be distorted to fit my own proportions so that the proportions and data of the motion captured footage remained entirely untouched and “pure” for example, at points in the footage where I reach up and touch my own face, a motion impossible for a stubby-armed realistically proportioned T-rex to achieve.11

Fig 3.8: Sketch study of T-Rex character next to a photograph taken from the motion capture studio session

However, for obvious reasons the original bone structure as imported from the motion capture software did not involve tail bones (since I do not have a tail) so these had to be added. I

11 _{It should be noted, that “bones” generated for the purposes of articulating a computer generated avatar are not}

necessarily exactly anatomically correct, a fossilized skeleton of a T-Rex might contain over 20 short tail bones, whereas a computer generated rig might only use 3 or 4 much longer bones to adequately simulate motion. (For more details on how the rig in this particular case was constructed, please refer to Appendix C.)

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also added a jaw bone and finger bones12 _{to the bones existing within the motion-captured data.}

In the event, due to deadline constraints, the finger bones were not hand animated, perhaps to the detriment of the completed animation.13

Fig 3.9: Raw motion captured data imported into Maya, with added tail, finger and jaw-bones

While I was deliberately aiming for a stylized, non-human character in order to prevent distraction from the fundamental movements and postures, I felt it was important that the character have some sort of visual personality and be engaging. Hence applying a texture, and hand animating the jaw and eyelids.14 _{Without the mouth moving with the speech the character}

felt too distracting and odd. Even simple open and closed mouth movements could help to make the character more believable as actually talking, in the manner of a sock puppet.

12 _{“Parenting” is a term used in computer animation to indicate attaching one object, the “child” to the “parent.”}

Wherever the parent goes, the child follows, but if the child runs off, the parent does not follow. (At least, not in the context of computer animation!) Thus in computer animation terms, to (computer) animate a character picking up a cup, you attach the cup as “child” to the hand of the character, thus this hand becomes “parent” to the cup. Wherever the hand goes, the cup follows – attached to the hand. Let go, and the cup falls – but the hand remains.

13 _{Attaching these extra bones to the rig after the data had been captured (such as tail, fingers and jaw) proved to be}

easy enough, but they would contain no animation. However, as these were extremities, it was hoped that adding these extra bones would not impact the core motion captured movement, which would remain untouched. These new bones would follow where the existing, motion captured bones took them, through being parented to the motion-captured parts of the skeleton. However, they would have benefited from being hand animated, to look less stiff and more natural.

14 _{The new tail and jaw bones could be animated by hand, (for example to have the mouth open and close with the}

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