Intimate scrutiny: using rotoscoping to unravel the auteur-animator beneath the theory

The act of Rotoscoping by its very nature takes live-action film and passes it through the hand and eye of the animator, with results that can heighten and intensify every flicker of emotion. (Ruddell 2012) This intense, frame by frame scrutiny can potentially capture through hand drawn art the most fleeting of micro-expressions, and when the filmed subject is themselves the animator, the auteur, the act of animating over filmed footage becomes a potential means for exploring intimate and sometimes distressing personal issues; capturing, dissecting and scrutinising emotions ranging from delight to subjective pain. I will discuss the following questions: What effect does this have on the animator, who is forced to re-live and re-invent very personal subjects? How can rotoscoping be used as a tool for unwrapping the subtleties of body-language and fleeting expressions? By quantifying and qualifying emotion through practical research, theory and self-reflective study, via the production of an animated artefact, the animator as auteur-researcher hopes to establish new avenues of study in emotion and animation. Buchanan, A. 2007, "Facial Expressions for Empathic Communication of Emotion in Animated Characters", Online Journal for Animation History and Theory, vol. Animated Dialogues, pp. 22nd February 2011. Mehrabian, A. 1981, Silent Messages: Implicit Communication of Emotions and Attitudes, Wadsworth Publishing Company, USA. Ruddell, C. 2012, "'Don't Box Me In': Blurred Lines in Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly", Animation: An Interdisciplinary Journal, [Online], vol. 7, no. 1, pp. 7-23. Russell, J.A. 1997, "Reading emotions from and into faces: Resurrecting a dimensional-contextual perspective" in The Psychology of Facial Expression (Studies in Emotion and Social Interaction), eds. J.M. Fernández-Dols & J.A. Russell, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 295

The evocation and expression of emotion through documentary animation

How might an animator distil and study emotion? Could animation itself be a means to unlock meaning that previous experiments have not been able to access? Animation has the power to both highlight and conceal emotions as expressed through body movement and gesture. When we view live action (human interview) documentary footage, we are exposed not just to the spoken words, but the subtle nuances of body movements. How much might be lost when documentary footage is transposed into animation, or indeed, what might be gained, translated through the personal and artistic view of the animator? Drawing on my own previous experience as a games animator, now using research through practice methodology, this paper explores the results of the first of a series of animations created to explore the more subtle nuances of gesture. Though the medium of a documentary style interview, opposing topics are used to evoke strong emotions; firstly of happiness, then of sadness, with a view to accessing real rather than acted (simulated) emotions and their associated body movements

Animating observed emotional behaviour: a practice-based investigation comparing three approaches to self-figurative animation

This research explores different animation approaches to rendering observed emotional behaviour, through the creation of an animated artefact. It opens with an introduction to the research and the methodology chosen before progressing to a review of academic and practitioner-based literature associated with observed emotional behaviour. Building upon this foundation of literature, the thesis outlines how the artifact was created with a practice based approach drawn from Haseman’s cycle of creation, feedback, reflection and then creation. The main research question is augmented by a series of contributory questions that explore the research through iterations of animation drawn from a base of live action footage of observed emotional behaviour. These exploratory iterations progress though motion capture, rotoscopy and finally freeform animation. The completed artifact and its findings are explored first though a perception study and then a production study. This thesis is based on the investigation and discourse of observed emotional behaviour surrounding the use of animation, specifically, the direct study of the observation of emotional behaviour through the application of animation as a tool of research. It aims to provide a basis of discussion and contribution to knowledge for animation practitioners, theorists and practitioner-researchers seeking to use less performative and exaggerated forms

How Dynamic Brain Networks Tune Social Behavior in Real Time

During social interaction, the brain has the enormous task of interpreting signals that are fleeting, subtle, contextual, abstract, and often ambiguous. Despite the signal complexity, the human brain has evolved to be highly successful in the social landscape. Here, we propose that the human brain makes sense of noisy dynamic signals through accumulation, integration, and prediction, resulting in a coherent representation of the social world. We propose that successful social interaction is critically dependent on a core set of highly connected hubs that dynamically accumulate and integrate complex social information and, in doing so, facilitate social tuning during moment-to-moment social discourse. Successful interactions, therefore, require adaptive flexibility generated by neural circuits composed of highly integrated hubs that coordinate context-appropriate responses. Adaptive properties of the neural substrate, including predictive and adaptive coding, and neural reuse, along with perceptual, inferential, and motivational inputs, provide the ingredients for pliable, hierarchical predictive models that guide our social interactions

Mental health and unemployment: A systematic review and meta-analysis of interventions to improve depression and anxiety outcomes

Background: Unemployment is associated with substantially greater depression and anxiety, constituting a considerable public health concern. The current review provides the most comprehensive synthesis to date, and first meta-analysis, of controlled intervention trials aimed at improving depression and anxiety outcomes during unemployment. Methods: Searches were conducted within PsycInfo, Cochrane Central, PubMed and Embase from their inception to September 2022. Included studies conducted controlled trials of interventions focused on improving mental health within unemployed samples, and reported on validated measures of depression, anxiety, or distress (mixed depression and anxiety). Narrative syntheses and random effects meta-analyses were conducted among prevention- and treatment-level interventions for each outcome. Results: A total of 39 articles reporting on 33 studies were included for review (sample sizes ranging from 21 to 1801). Both prevention and treatment interventions tended to be effective overall, with treatment interventions producing larger effect sizes than prevention interventions. The clearest evidence for particular intervention approaches emerged for prevention-level Cognitive Therapy/CBT, followed by prevention-level work-related interventions, although neither produced entirely consistent effects. Limitations: Risk of bias was generally high across studies. Low numbers of studies within subgroups precluded any comparisons between long-term and short-term unemployment, limited comparisons among treatment studies, and reduced the power of meta-analyses. Conclusions: Both prevention- and treatment-level mental health-focused interventions have merit for reducing symptoms of anxiety and depression among those experiencing unemployment. Cognitive Therapy/CBT and work-related interventions hold the most robust evidence base, which can inform both prevention and treatment strategies implemented by clinicians, employment services providers, and governments

Low-Froude-number stable flows past mountains

A new approximate analysis is presented for stably stratified flows at low Froude number F past mountains of heightH. In the “top” layer where the streamlines pass above the surface of themountain, there is a perturbation flow. This approximately matches the lower flow in the “middle” ‘horizontal’ layer [M] in which the streamlines pass round the mountain in nearly horizontal planes, as in Drazin’s (DRAZIN P. G., On the steady flow of a fluid of variable density past an obstacle, Tellus, 13 (1961) 239-251) model. The pressure associated with the diverging streamlines on the lee side of the summit layer flow drives the separated flow in the horizontal layer (which is not included in Drazin’s model). This explains the vortical wake flow in experiments and in the “inviscid” computations of Smolarkiewicz and Rotunno (SMOLARKIEWICZ P. K. and ROTUNNO R., Low Froude number flow past three-dimensional obstacles. Part I: Baroclinically generated lee vortices, J. Atmos. Sci., 46 (1989) 1154-1164). A method for estimating the height HT FH of the cut-off mountain is derived, as a function of upstream shear, mountain shape and other parameters. Recent laboratory experiments have confirmed how the curvature of the oncoming shear flow profile

Role of CBP and SATB-1 in Aging, Dietary Restriction, and Insulin-Like Signaling

Increased transcriptional complex activity, or pharmacological mimics of increased complex activity, predict lifespan in mice and mediate the protective effects of dietary restriction during aging

Induced activation in accelerator components

The residual activity induced in particle accelerators is a serious issue from the point of view of radiation safety as the long-lived radionuclides produced by fast or moderated neutrons and impact protons cause problems of radiation exposure for staff involved in the maintenance work and when decommissioning the facility. This paper presents activation studies of the magnets and collimators in the High Energy Beam Transport line of the European Spallation Source due to the backscattered neutrons from the target and also due to the direct proton interactions and their secondaries. An estimate of the radionuclide inventory and induced activation are predicted using the GEANT4 code