Predicting Perceptions: Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Appearance, pp. 133-136, Edinburgh, UK, ISBN 978-1-4716-6869-2, April 2012. Using the Principles of Animation to Predict Allocation of Attention Robin Sloan Institute of Arts, Media and Computer Games University of Abertay Dundee, Dundee, DD1 1HG, UK +44 (0) 1382 308177 R.Sloan@abertay.ac.uk Santiago Martinez and Ken Scott-Brown School of Social and Health Sciences University of Abertay Dundee, Dundee, DD1 1HG, UK +44 (0) 1382 308590 {S.Martinez, K.Scott-Brown} @abertay.ac.uk ABSTRACT The purpose of this paper is to introduce a range of animation principles that the authors believe may be used to predict audience eye movements and responses, and to propose how a combination of practice-based and empirical research could lead to an enhanced understanding of how to create animated cues to allocate viewer attention. These insights inform the prediction of attention in deictic gaze cuing contexts where the convergence of motion stimulus, agent presence, and facial and gestural cuing has the potential to create an engaging interactive experience and long term affiliation. Categories and Subject Descriptors H.5 INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION H.5.1 Multimedia Information Systems, Animations; J.4 SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES Psychology Keywords Performance, Design, Experimentation, Human Factors, Theory, Attention, Animation, Believability, Motion, Games. 1. INTRODUCTION Viewer’s allocation of attention and direction has been carefully observed and quantified by successive experimental psychological phases of research in tandem with theoretical spotlight analogies [1]. Active vision approaches have highlighted how the context of the viewer and the task requirements at hand modulate and in many cases predict the location of eye gaze fixation based on known expertise and experience. For example, Posner [2] (1980, p. 4) defined the orienting of attention as “the aligning of attention with a source of sensory input or an internal semantic structure stored in memory”. Its primary means are foveating eye movements with a focal point centering the area of interest, while other procedures include a covert shift of the focus of attention occurring with no eye and head movements. Posner’s orienting cues prove that people can quickly orient visual attention to particular areas in space. The different locations of cues used in these studies (peripheral [2] and central [3]) are respectively associated with involuntary (automatic) or voluntary (conscious) orientation toward a spatial location or salient feature. It is crucial for this work to understand that orientation may contribute to stimulus detection in the particular area, and influence reaction time (RT) by the validity of the cue: valid cues benefit shorter times and by contrast misleading cues provoke longer times. More recently, the attentional processes occurring in human interaction with digital environments has become recognized as a mutual area of interest to cognitive science and designers of computer interfaces. Predicting perceptions in these complex unpredictable environments is critical to efficient machine use [1]. Animators have received standardised training in the prediction of viewer eye movements for over seventy-five years. The principles of animation, developed by the Disney Studio from the late 1920s until the late 1930s, are widely regarded in the film and games industries as the fundamental components of any successful animation. The book that first popularised the principles of animation and that documented the Golden Era of the Disney Studio - the Illusion of Life [4] - is so highly regarded that it has been considered one of the most important books ever written on animation [5]. 2. PRINCIPLES OF ANIMATION The principles of animation were developed through what is now more commonly known as practice-based research in visual art and design [6] or performative research [7], rather than through application of the scientific method. The refinement of the techniques that produced an acceptable standard of animation was brought about through repeated and systematic observation, analytical drawing, and practical experimentation. It was the value judgments of the expert practitioners at Disney that determined which techniques had the best effects, not measurement of audience response. Those techniques that resulted in animated movements that were pleasing to the eye, and that most concisely communicated the meaning and emotion of a story, became known as the principles of animation. The principles proved to have an almost instantaneous effect on the quality of the resulting animated films, with the Disney Studio pioneering feature-length animations starting with Snow White and the Seven Dwarves in 1937. In the latter half of the 20th century, as the demand for computer-generated animation began to exceed the demand for traditional animation, it was the Pixar studio that adopted and adapted the principles of animation for 3D, again through practice- based research. With the principles of animation as a conceptual framework, professional practitioners continue to predict how well animations will guide and hold audience attention, rarely stopping to consider empirical assessment of those predictions. However, this practice- based knowledge of audience observation of animation can be tested and corroborated by quantitative and qualitative research [8]. Animation can be broken down into a series of linked stages, and several of these are of interest in the prediction of allocation of attention from viewers. Fig 1 shows some of the key principles Predicting Perceptions: The 3 rd International Conference on Appearance, 17-19 April, 2012, Edinburgh, UK. Conference Proceedings Publication ISBN: 978-1-4716- 6869-2, Pages: 133-136 @2012 Authors & Predicting Perceptions. All Rights Reserved.