Virtual Character Design for Games and Interactive Media

Chapter 6

Acting, Movement, and Animation

When we first started discussing character performance back in Chapter 4, our focus was on the psychological principles that underpin human behavior and perception. We examined personality, emotion, and cognitive processes, and went on to look at nonverbal communication through body language, facial expression, and vocal cues. Our emphasis was explicitly on the psychology of natural human performance—how we act in social interactions and how we react to stimuli—rather than on what we might consider to be the creative process of an actor. In this final chapter on the theories of virtual character performance, we look to extend our understanding of the psychological principles of human behavior into a ...