Sunday, February 19, 2012

2/16 Perceptional Animation of Body and Hand Motions

Sophie Joerg gave a guest lecture today on her research regarding hand and finger animation. I guess I didn't realize how much finger motions can convey. Hands are obvious - we all talk with our hands, some more than others, because they help get our point across. When you talk with your hands, though, you don't (or at least I don't) think about what your fingers are doing; they just go, whereas you're consciously moving your hands. I think it's because of that that we can so easily notice strange finger motions. We don't think about them because they come so naturally, so when they look wrong it is very obvious.

I was also interested in what Sophie had to say about the idea of the uncanny valley. I've heard of it before, but no one has ever mentioned how it differs from person to person. For example, she showed a clip from The Polar Express and said how strange the characters looked and how bad the critics' reviews were, but honestly I didn't think the characters looked that unnatural. She said that to some people, the characters were creepy but some people didn't mind them at all - I definitely fell into the latter group. I didn't realize how greatly this affects different people.

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