COMMUNICATING EMOTIONS USING CLOTH COLORS, BODY POSES, AND FACIAL EXPRESSIONS ON STATIC VIRTUAL CHARACTERS

The aim of this study is to determine factors that influence people’s perceptions toward perceived emotion of virtual characters. In the experiment, two characters (male and female) were design in three different cases. The first case is in the facial expression (happy, sad and neutral). The second case is on the cloth color (positive, negative, and calm). The third case is in the body positions (happy, sad, and neutral pose). An online survey was developed after combining all variations of facial expression, body expression, and color of cloth with 54 images to evaluate the factors. The survey webpage link was sent via email to 100 graduate and undergraduate students, and workers at SIUC. A total of 30 students participate (18 females, 12 males), ages from 19-42 years in this study for a 30% response rate. Using ANOVA from SPSS, it was found that all the four factors (character gender, face motion, body emotion, and cloth color) are statistically significant predictors of peoples\u27 perception toward the virtual characters. However, the body motion factor was the strongest predictor from the three predictors