A phenomenological study of facial expression animation

Abstract

This paper covers the findings of a qualitative study of facial animation, in which a cohort of student animators were tasked with producing spatiotemporally configured emotional expression animations. The timing of the upper and lower face regions within and between expressions such as happiness, sadness, and anger was explored by the animators, who sought to determine which configurations were the most and least effective in practice. The results showed that the student animators shared a degree of consensus when they discussed which configurations they found most authentic, and which configurations were the most clear. Configuration selection was dependent on the emotion or emotional transition being animated. These findings demonstrate that engagement with hand-key animators and practice-based research can generate results which would be of interest to the broader HCI community, in particular as regards the animation of interactive humanoid agents which exhibit believable changes in emotion.