6.1 Introduction
The journey of this thesis has been something of a personal one, but there are inherent difficulties on producing a work that remains too personal and inward looking, thus I drew inspiration from Robin Sloan’s doctoral research.
Sloan’s work focuses upon the study of “emotion expression choreographies” wherein he describes his work as “an interdisciplinary research project which would draw upon the knowledge of animation practice and emotional psychology. The aim of the project was to jointly investigate the artistic generation and observer perception of emotional expression animation to determine whether the nuances of emotional facial expression could be artistically choreographed to enhance audience interpretation” (2010, p.1). In his research, Sloan created computer generated animated human faces “of six emotions (happiness, sadness, anger, fear, disgust, and surprise) at three levels of emotional intensity (low, moderate, and high).
Animations lasted between two and twenty seconds, and consisted of an onset, peak expression, and offset” (2009, p.63). These computer generated animations were shown to observers to see if they could recognise the emotions displayed, and, as the research progressed, to see if observers could perceive levels of “authenticity” of the computer generated facial expressions.
Like Sloan, my own research involved the creation of animations and the central role of myself as “practitioner-researcher” in constructing research through animation practice, and as this research hinges on the creation of animations, it would not be easy to replicate exactly. Sloan focused on animating facial expressions using a 3D human facial rig. The expressions were drawn from observation and psychological research into the facial depiction of specific emotions. My own research interlinks with Sloan’s but approaches from a different direction. Where Sloan has approached facial expression by animating specific human emotions onto a CG facial rig, emotions that are meant to be clear and unambiguous, and presented in short bursts, I have followed a more organic and unstructured study of more restrained and subtle packages of emotion, involving the direct observation and dissection through animation of a sequence of live action footage. While the direction of the approaches differs, both approaches use
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animation and the observation and reflection of the animator practitioner. Sloan points out a difficulty within his approach that stands equally for my own research and perhaps for any practitioner-researcher trying to use animation as a research and reflective tool.
“Ultimately this research was limited by its focus on artistic method and the interpretation of a single practitioner”
(Sloan, 2011, p.277)
Sloan approaches this difficulty by subjecting his work to “two qualitative studies; one of animation production, and one of animation perception.” In this he describes testing his work by “relating [it] to the intersubjective interpretation of a group of student animation
practitioners” and then by “relating [it] to the intersubjective interpretation of animation audiences” (2011, p.278). He begins by analysing his “own experience of producing and observing choreographed emotional expressions” (2011, p.278) before augmenting this with two further qualitative studies.
Chapters 3 to 5 contain my own experience analysis, presented alongside each iteration of the artifact (and augmented with a measure of feedback from viewers and peers.) In this chapter I detail the exploration of my own versions of a dual qualitative study of animation perception and animation production.
6.2 Part 1: Animation Perception Study
Sloan’s second qualitative approach involved a study of audience perception of his animated work, in the hope that the findings would substantiate, support and elaborate the findings of his own practitioner-researcher observations (2011). For this he arranged screenings of his work followed by feedback obtained from five focus groups with a total of 26 participants, drawn from psychology and visual arts students from the University of Abertay, as well as a general group of participants found via Twitter and Facebook, aiming for “a snapshot of possible audience interpretations of animation” (2011, p.318).
This approach ties in with Haseman’s post performance reception study method (2007), derived from feedback processes obtained from an audience. Methods of obtaining feedback might include focus groups, individual interviews and online-based feedback.
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Like Sloan, I wished to draw my audience from a range of experience. However, I wished to avoid using students from my own university and instead try and gain a wider and more randomised range of observers. Likewise, I hoped to obtain a “snapshot” of audience
interpretation. Thus I chose not to use focus groups and instead presented the work online with an open-ended questionnaire designed to allow participants to volunteer potentially
unexpected feedback. This questionnaire returned feedback from 35 participants across a variety of backgrounds.
6.2.1 Setting up the online questionnaire
After completing all three stages of the animation and editing them together into a single artifact, I put together a feedback form using SurveyMonkey (Surveymonkey.com, 1999) a fairly well known survey and data collecting website which allows untrained individuals (such as myself) to design and publish a reasonably robust questionnaire able to run on most platforms and devices.
I hoped to get not just those “savvy” with animation and visual arts, as might be expected from running tests within my University, but accessing a wider range of ages and backgrounds via Social Network groups and snowballing from individuals who were able to pass the link across their own friends circle. (For further discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of using online feedback, refer to appendix E.)
Questions were limited to a maximum of ten (one of which was a standard age/gender question) laid out simply and clearly across three pages. The majority of the questions were open ended, requiring the responder to voice their own opinions. This was due to the qualitative nature of the research which relied on the emotional (or lack of) reactions and interpretations of the viewers. Open ended questions can be useful for providing unexpected answers, but would need to be analysed by hand to see if there were any recurring themes or unexpected reactions.
Due to the text based nature of the questionnaire, it was assumed that it would be unlikely that responders would wish to respond more than once, though there was no way of checking as the questionnaire was set up to be completely anonymous. There was also no restriction on how many times a respondent might want to view the artifact before completing the form.
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The questionnaire was initially tested with a small sample of test respondents whose data was not included in the final research, but whose feedback and response was used to adjust any problems or errors in the questionnaire before launch.
After testing and correcting, the questionnaire was given a “Soft Launch” using Livejournal (Livejournal.com, 2015), an online social networking site on the 20th December 2015, so that
initial patterns and data response could be checked. Soft launch data was included in the final research, but any errors or corrections that might have been overlooked by the testers could not be corrected. Full launch was initiated on the 3rd of January 2016 on Facebook (Facebook,
2017), following a small prelaunch announcement to encourage response rate.
The aim in seeking and processing these responses, was to pick up on threads and insights for my research, but also to correct any confusion or errors with each feedback iteration before the final launch, and finally in the hope that the collected and processed data might be used to frame approaches for further research.
6.2.2 How the artifact was presented
Once the artifact had been completed, with all its iterations of live action footage, motion captured 3D Animation, 2D rotoscoped animation and traditional style 2D hand drawn animation integrated into one film, it was made available to be viewed online.
Members of the public were invited to view it via social media networks including facebook groups, blog groups and journals. Viewers were encouraged to share the link onto their own groups and networks.
On viewing, viewers were given the option to fill in an anonymous, online questionnaire. (See appendix F.) Though the questionnaire consisted of only 10 questions, 8 of the 10
questions were open ended, requiring text entry responses. The aim was to allow respondents to speak freely without constraining them to a pre-selected set of responses, to avoid leading or influencing respondents. This choice had been born from previous online response testing I had conducted (see chapters 3 and 4, for previous informal feedbacks and the appendix D for the full responses) where clips from the artifact had been shown with no question prompting, which had resulted in unexpected and spontaneous reactions. (Something I hoped to find again.) Thus the final questionnaire was deliberately designed to foster this spontaneity.