Research Methods Week 3

The research paper I chose is situated under mathematics, simulation, animation, but more specifically studying one aspect of the Principles of Animation. The two students seemed to have quite an interest in researching exaggeration in Character Animation.
To further their understanding of why exaggeration is used in cartoons, the authors created a series of algorithms to explore the “trajectory-based technique” to motion exaggeration (Kwon & Lee 2007). They wanted to accurately recreate what cartoons did to utilize the Principles of Animation through mathematics and achieve the same end goal but using a different method.
Their paper also goes in depth into photorealistic and non-photorealistic approaches and how motion capture has furthered the animation industry (Kwon & Lee 2007).
Their methodology revolved around the practice and iteration of changing the joint hierarchy by tinkering with algorithms within a simulation. Their method of wanting exaggerated movement was not through altering the joint angles, but altering with joint trajectory (Kwon & Lee 2007). They were able to achieve their goal by breaking traditional link-length constraints, refining joint hierarchy, and using curve interpolation in sacrifice of the volume of the character not being static (Kwon & Lee 2007).

I really liked how the authors took a different approach than the one already established and still manage to execute exaggeration through rubbery movement. I wanted to take a more empirical approach to their findings by free handedly animating what they’ve learned. This being: increasing the joint and volume of the character and make him look rubbery as possible.

Reference
Kwon, J & Lee, I 2007, ‘Rubber-like Exaggeration for Character Animation’, 15th Pacific Conference on Computer Graphics and Applications.