Comparing perception of affective body movements displayed by actors and animated characters

This paper reports on a comparative study, which investigated how emotional body language, from animated characters and real actors, are perceived. The results are discussed in relation to the uncanny valley [1], which is a drop in believability as animated characters become more realistic [2]. The results showed that, videos of the actor were found to be more emotional, more believable and more natural than the animated characters whilst displaying the same emotional body language (recorded simultaneously by Motion Capture technology). Moreover, there was a significant difference in the number of correctly interpreted negative emotions displayed. Although, not for positive emotions. This could be due to the physical appearance of the animated character or to the loss of micro-gestures inherent to Motion Capture technology.