THE EXPERIMENTTHE EXPERIMENT

RESULTSRESULTS

Is COLOUR the only salient indicator of personality?

Or can OTHER VISUAL ASPECTSalso indicate a character's

personality/attitude?

QUESTIONQUESTION

OBSERVATIONOBSERVATION

1

Outward-looking;aims to capture OUTER REALITY

Inward-looking;aims to capture INNER REALITY

The EXPRESSIVE Aspects The EXPRESSIVE Aspects

CHARACTER DESIGNCHARACTER DESIGN

INTRODUCTION and OBSERVATIONSINTRODUCTION and OBSERVATIONSA character's PERSONALITY is

often reflected by their COLOUR schemeeg., ENERGETIC/FIERY vs CALM

ofby MODEL STUDENT (###, Chocolate)

This is an example of an EXPRESSIVEEXPRESSIVE, as opposed to REPRESENTATIONALREPRESENTATIONAL use of colour.

eg., nature, societyhuman form/action

eg., moods, emotions, attitudes

(eg., size, position in composition,

symmetry)

An ASYMMETRICAL character design can also convey an ENERGETIC

personality/attitude

HYPOTHESISHYPOTHESIS

In the Baroque Era, ASYMMETRICAL compositions were used to convey

a sense of energy and motion.

This contrasts with the Renaissance era, where SYMMETRICAL compositions

were used to convey balance and harmony.

We designed 8 characters; 4 had asymmetrical designs and poses,

4 had symmetrical designs and poses

2 We designed a survey asking participants to guess how energetic the characters were on a scale of 1-7scale of 1-7

3 We administered the survey to50 university-students and tabulated the results

The character designs withASYMMETRICAL DESIGNS AND POSES

were ranked (on average) withHIGHER ENERGY SCORES

As predicted,

A1 S1 A2 S2 A3 S3 A4 S40

2

4

6

86.76.7

55 4.74.7 4.34.3 4.54.5 4.24.2 3.73.72.92.9

Character Design

Ave

rag

e E

ne

rgy

Sco

re

ENERGY SCORESENERGY SCORESASYMMETRICAL SYMMETRICAL

6.76.7 4.74.7 4.54.5 3.73.7 5.05.0 4.34.3 4.24.2 2.92.9A1 A2 A3 A4

4.94.9 4.14.1

S1 S2 S3 S4

DISCUSSIONDISCUSSION

REFERENCESREFERENCES

SteckerStecker 20102010

SteckerStecker 20102010

Stecker, R. 2010. Aesthetics and the philosophy of art: An introduction. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. ● Stokstad, M., & Cothren, M. W. 2011. Art History. Vol. 2. Prentice Hall.

The results to our study suggest that symmetry/asymmetry can be used in

character design to express a character's personality.

They further suggest that HEIGHT may be a factor in expressing ENERGY as a personality trait;

short charactersshort characters were ranked, on average, with were ranked, on average, with higher energy scoreshigher energy scores