Contextual Research

Anthropomorphism

Definition of Anthropomorphism

Imbuing the imagined or real behavior of nonhuman agents with human-like characteristics, motivations, intentions, and emotions is the essence of anthropomorphism. These nonhuman agents may include anything that acts with apparent independence, including nonhuman animals, natural forces, religious deities, and mechanical or electronic devices. As the Oxford Dictionary (Soanes & Stevenson, 2005) more simply puts it, anthropomorphism is the “attribution of human characteristics or behavior to a god, animal, or object” (p. 66). (Epley, 2007)

An anthropomorphic character was defined as a human-like representation, which is capable of displaying emotional expressions, while a non-anthropomorphic character was an object or a part of human form, which was not able to express emotions (Lewis, 2003)

Anthropomorphism of artificial agents

Autonomous virtual characters and social robots are meant to interact with humans. They should be able to communicate, express emotions and exhibit personality. Their social skills are highly dependant on their physical design, as well as on their motion capabilities.

Discussion

Anthropomorphic characters do not need to have realistic aspect which human characters need to have. We can apply this term in to our project. Our goal is giving a life to the washing machine and makes him as an opponent of the human character. in order to make successful anthropomorphic character, we have to follow some steps stated in Thalman’s research. He argued that the characters should have functions of human such as faces, speech capabilities and body capabilities. But, in our project, anthropomorphic characters will only be equipped with face and few body parts so we will fully utilize the facial expression of them. Their facial expression will be quite enough to convey their emotion against human characters. 

This is a sample image of the washing machine character. As you can see, he does not have any body parts except eyes and mouth (the hole). But, it is certain that we can articulate his emotion by only using those body parts.

I have attached related video clips of good examples of using anthropomorphism in animation in order to support our idea on anthropomorphic character. As you can see from these two video clips below, those two characters only have few body parts such as mouth and eye. Though they used verbal expression, it has many similarities with our project. 

Good examples of Anthropomorphism in Animation

Tayo the Bus (Korean animation) used a bus as an object of anthropomorphism

Thomas the train used a trains as an object of anthropomorphism

Cars (Pixar) used car as an object of anthropomorphism

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Full text 

http://psychology.uchicago.edu/people/faculty/cacioppo/jtcreprints/onseeinghuman.pdf

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.104.6414&rep=rep1&type=pdf

http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/73/27/63/PDF/paper.pdf