The purpose of this study is to find the effectiveness of using animated characters in advertising targeted to kids. The research design is quantitative and its research type is causal. The respondents of the study are 'Pre-primary school... more
The purpose of this study is to find the effectiveness of using animated characters in advertising targeted to kids. The research design is quantitative and its research type is causal. The respondents of the study are 'Pre-primary school going kids' from nine different schools belonging to different areas of Karachi, Pakistan. Data is analyzed through Classification Regression Tree (CART). The findings of this research study reveal that liking of the animated spokes character has a significant effect on product and brand character recognition, Product-Brand Character Association and brand preference. The majority of earlier related studies have been descriptive in nature. This study has used relatively advanced measurement technique like CART thereby making a methodical contribution. It is especially useful considering the paucity of research studies on advertising targeted at kids in Pakistan. JEL Classification M37 Keywords Children Buying Behavior Animated Character Advertising Effectiveness Brand Preference Brand Association Brand Recall Brand Recognition
This article describes an evolution of training programs to use first-person interaction in virtual re- ality (VR) situations to teach safety skills to children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and fetal alcohol spectrum disorder... more
This article describes an evolution of training programs to use first-person interaction in virtual re- ality (VR) situations to teach safety skills to children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD). Multiple VR programs for children aged 2 to 9 were built and tested between 1992 and 2007. Based on these results, a learning design evolved that uses practice in virtual space with guidance and correction by an animated character, strategic limitations on al- lowed actions to force correct patterning, and customization of worlds and responses to simplify user controls. This article describes program evolution by comparing design details and results as variations in behavioral responses between disorders, differences in skill set complexity between different safety skills being taught, and improved technology required changes in the virtual train- ing methodology. A series of research projects are summarized in which the VR programs proved effect...
Eyes play an important role in communication among people. Motions of the eye express emotions and regulate the flow of conversation. Hence we consider fundamental that virtual humans or other characters present convincing and expressive... more
Eyes play an important role in communication among people. Motions of the eye express emotions and regulate the flow of conversation. Hence we consider fundamental that virtual humans or other characters present convincing and expressive gaze in applications such as Embodied Conversational Agents (ECAs), games and movies. However, we perceive that in many applications that require automatic generation of facial
Here we describe character animation production in the intelligent multimedia storytelling system, CONFUCIUS, which presents natural language stories as 3D animation, speech and non-speech audio. The modelling of animated characters in... more
Here we describe character animation production in the intelligent multimedia storytelling system, CONFUCIUS, which presents natural language stories as 3D animation, speech and non-speech audio. The modelling of animated characters in CONFUCIUS follows the H-...
This article describes an evolution of training programs to use first-person interaction in virtual re- ality (VR) situations to teach safety skills to children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and fetal alcohol spectrum disorder... more
This article describes an evolution of training programs to use first-person interaction in virtual re- ality (VR) situations to teach safety skills to children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD). Multiple VR programs for children aged 2 to 9 were built and tested between 1992 and 2007. Based on these results, a learning design evolved that uses practice in virtual space with guidance and correction by an animated character, strategic limitations on al- lowed actions to force correct patterning, and customization of worlds and responses to simplify user controls. This article describes program evolution by comparing design details and results as variations in behavioral responses between disorders, differences in skill set complexity between different safety skills being taught, and improved technology required changes in the virtual train- ing methodology. A series of research projects are summarized in which the VR programs proved effect...
This paper addresses the problem of cognitive character animation. We propose the use of finite state machines for the behavioral control of characters. Our approach rests on the idea that the cognitive character arises from the... more
This paper addresses the problem of cognitive character animation. We propose the use of finite state machines for the behavioral control of characters. Our approach rests on the idea that the cognitive character arises from the evolutionary computation embedded in the artificial life simulation, which in our case is implemented by the finite state machine. We present some of the results of the WOXBOT/ARENA research project. This project to build virtual worlds is aimed at the graphic simulation of an arena, where small mobile robots can perform requested tasks while behaving according to their own motivation and reasoning. Each robot is an intelligent agent that perceives the virtual environment through a simulated vision system and reacts by moving away from or approaching the object it sees. The conception and specification of the robots and environment are being done very carefully to create an open distributed object architecture that could serve as a test-bed freely available ...
Gaze is an extremely powerful expressive signal that is used for many pur- poses, from expressing emotion to regulating human interaction. The use of gaze as a signal has been exploited to strong efiect in hand-animated characters,... more
Gaze is an extremely powerful expressive signal that is used for many pur- poses, from expressing emotion to regulating human interaction. The use of gaze as a signal has been exploited to strong efiect in hand-animated characters, greatly en- hancing the believability of the character's simulated life. However, virtual humans animated in real-time have been less successful at using expressive
Eyes play an important role in communication among people. Motions of the eye express emotions and regulate the flow of conversation. Hence we consider fundamental that virtual humans or other characters present convincing and expressive... more
Eyes play an important role in communication among people. Motions of the eye express emotions and regulate the flow of conversation. Hence we consider fundamental that virtual humans or other characters present convincing and expressive gaze in applications such as Embodied Conversational Agents (ECAs), games and movies. However, we perceive that in many applications that require automatic generation of facial
With technology allowing for increased realism in video games, realistic, human-like characters risk falling into the Uncanny Valley. The Uncanny Valley phenomenon implies that virtual characters approaching full human-likeness will evoke... more
With technology allowing for increased realism in video games, realistic, human-like characters risk falling into the Uncanny Valley. The Uncanny Valley phenomenon implies that virtual characters approaching full human-likeness will evoke a negative reaction from the viewer, due to aspects of the character's appearance and behavior differing from the human norm. This study investigates if “uncanniness” is increased for a character with a perceived lack of facial expression in the upper parts of the face. More important, our study ...
This paper presents a powerful animation engine, called Maxine, to develop applications with embodied animated agents. The engine, based on open source tools, allows the management of scenes and virtual characters, and allows multimodal... more
This paper presents a powerful animation engine, called Maxine, to develop applications with embodied animated agents. The engine, based on open source tools, allows the management of scenes and virtual characters, and allows multimodal and emotional interaction with the users. The virtual actors are provided with facial expressions, lyp-synch, emotional voice, and can vary their answers depending on their emotional
