What do you know about the Uncanny Valley phenomenon? Well, for our community friends specialised in robotics and 3D computer animations this is not a mystery.
The Uncanny Valley phenomenon is the effect of a hypothesised psychological and aesthetic relation between an object's degree of resemblance to a human being and the emotional response to the object.
How the technical and artistic aspects influence the appearance of a virtual character in Character design? Let's talk about this on March 14, at 18:30, at our next Tech Talks meetup at Mediacor.
Our guest speaker is Eduard Zell, a research group leader at the University of Bonn, Germany.
Avoiding uncanny characters - an empirical perspective on the perception of virtual characters.
Digital avatars in games, or VFX, are often criticised for their uncanny appearance due to a lack of realism, despite the best intentions of their creators. While this criticism is common in the media, empirical research does not support such a narrow perspective.
In this talk, Dr Eduard Zell will present the results of several studies on technical and artistic aspects that influence the appearance of a virtual character.
Design aspects can be low-level cues such as shading or level of detail, and high-level cues such as artistic stylisation. The findings will serve as an additional tool for designers and technicians to anticipate the effects of certain design decisions and to create more convincing characters, especially when budgets or time are limited.
We will focus on the following topics:
- What are the technical and artistic aspects that influence the appearance of a virtual character in Character design
- Character design: from the smallest details, such as shadows and lights, to artistic stylisation
- Why digital avatars in games are criticized for the lack of realism, despite the best intentions of its creators, as well as as what empirical research supports
Let's share thoughts and experiences on these issues on March 14, starting from 6:30 PM. Free participation with prior registration here: https://forms.gle/RJP5Uspcfw8WzBWe9
Eduard Zell is currently a research group leader at the University of Bonn. He completed his Masters in Computer Animation and Visual Effects at Bournemouth University, UK. He went on to complete his PhD in computer graphics in Germany, with a short stay in South Korea, and was a post-doctoral researcher at Trinity College, Dublin. His research focuses on perceptual aspects, such as why some characters look adorable and others creepy, as well as technical innovations in facial animation, animation retargeting or the creation of digital doubles from 3D scans. For his work, he received the Eurographics PhD Award in 2019. Despite his research work, he has always been very interested in applied computer graphics and worked for a year as a software developer in a volumetric video startup or has been involved in short animation productions.
Let's tech talk! See you on March 14, at Mediacor.
This event is organised by Mediacor - Film, AI, Gaming and New Media Center within USM, Universitatea de Stat din Moldova, in partnership with COR Creative Companies Association in Moldova, supported by USAID Moldova, Sweden and UKaid throught the Future Technologies Project.
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