The goal of this research is to identify key affective body gestures
that can clearly convey four emotions, namely happy, content, bored, and
frustrated, in animated characters that lack facial features. Two studies were
conducted, a first to identify affective body gestures from a series of videos,
and a second to validate the gestures as representative of the four emotions.
Videos were created using motion capture data of four actors portraying the
four targeted emotions and mapping the data to two 3D character models, one
male and one female. In the first study
the researcher identified body gestures that are commonly produced by individuals
when they experience each of the four emotions being tested. Each body gesture was
then annotated with descriptions of the movements using the FABO database. In
the second study the researcher tested four sets of identified body gestures,
one set for each emotion. The animated gestures were mapped to the 3D character
models and 91 participants were asked to identify the emotional state conveyed
by the characters through the body gestures. The participants were also asked
to rate intensity, typicality, and sincerity for each emotion using a 5-point
Likert scale. The study identified six gestures that were shown to have an
acceptable recognition rate of at least 80% for three of the four emotions
tested. Content was the only emotion which was not conveyed clearly by the
identified body gestures. The gender of the character and the participants’ age
were found to have a significant effect on recognition rates for the emotions.