• Cartoon and Animation Studies
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• s.20
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• pp.47-61
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• 2010

The Uncanny Valley is a hypothesis introduced by a roboticist, Masahiro Mori. The theory holds that as robots and other facsimiles of humans look and act more human-like, the emotional response from a human spectator to them will become increasingly empathic, until they approach realistic similarity to humans but not quite exactly like them, when those images stop being likable and instead become repulsive and "uncanny." Although the scientific validity of this hypothesis is still debatable, it is true that many spectators has tendency to reject hyper-realistic animation. For that reason, the great success of the recent movie Avatar is remarkable. Computer animations that try to represent humans in hyper-realistic way fall into a paradox: successful result images would look too mundane and unsuccessful ones look "wrong". On top of that, audience would expect from hyper-realistic animation to see same level of acting of live-action films, which is usually not the case. The subtle differences between digital characters and real actors irritate spectators and hinder them in absorbtion. The biggest difference between Avatar and other hyper-realistic animation is the referent of their representation. While Avatar pursues a similar hyper-realistic visual style, the referents of the representation shown in this movie are totally alien to us thus impossible to compare with the real counterparts. Unlike characters in other hyper-realistic animations who had to fight an uphill battle with great actors in real life, those in Avatar have criteria of their own. That is why this movie can be free from the dreadful valley and let the audience absorb into the spectacle.

• Broadcasting and Media Magazine
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.99-112
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• 2005

Christian Metz, the precursor of cine-semiology, considered cinema as a language in the sense that it is a set of messages grounded in a given matter of expression, and a signifying practice characterized by specific codifications. According to Metz, film forms a structured network produced by the interweaving of cinematic codes, within which cinematic subcodes represent specific usages of the particular code. For Metz, cinematic language is a totality of cinematic codes and subcodes, and history of the cinema is the trace of the competition, incorporations and exclusions of the subcodes. He also suggested a filmic text is not just a list of codes in effect, but a process of constant displacement and deformation of codes. Following Metz' textual analysis methodology, I investigated the formal configuration of Hayao Miyazaki‘s animation, Spirited Away. It is interesting to trace the interweaving of cinematic codes in Spirited Away, i.e. codes of lighting, color, movement, and auteurism, across the animation. I focused on the first scene at the bridge to Yubaba's bathhouse, analyzing each cinematic code and its subcode applied. The first bridge scene is carefully constructed to stand out the confrontation of Chihiro (with Haku) and the bathhouse. The bathhouse is not just a building, it represents the powerful witch, Yubaba, yet to appear on the scene, and functions as an antipode to Chihiro. In each shot, every subcode within the codes of framing, direction, angle, color, lighting and movement is used to maximize the contrast between the dominant bathhouse and the feeble 10-year-old girl. In Spirited Away, the subcodes within each cinematic ode are constantly competing and displacing each other to augment the antithesis between the characters and develop the narrative. As Metz's argument that film constitutes a quasi-linguistic practice as a pluricodic medium, Spirited Away communicates with the spectators with the combination and displacement of these cinematic codes and subcodes.

• KIPS Transactions on Computer and Communication Systems
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• v.9 no.8
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• pp.171-180
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• 2020

Smart Factory consists of digital automation solutions throughout the production process, including design, development, manufacturing and distribution, and it is an intelligent factory that installs IoT in its internal facilities and machines to collect process data in real time and analyze them so that it can control itself. The smart factory's equipment works in a physical combination of numerous hardware, rather than a virtual character being driven by a single object, such as a game. In other words, for a specific common goal, multiple devices must perform individual actions simultaneously. By taking advantage of the smart factory, which can collect process data in real time, if reinforcement learning is used instead of general machine learning, behavior control can be performed without the required training data. However, in the real world, it is impossible to learn more than tens of millions of iterations due to physical wear and time. Thus, this paper uses simulators to develop grid sortation systems focusing on transport facilities, one of the complex environments in smart factory field, and design cooperative multi-agent-based reinforcement learning to demonstrate efficient behavior control.

• Cartoon and Animation Studies
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• s.36
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• pp.349-374
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• 2014

The light is the language. Directors have to describe the scene component effectively his intention to configure the scene as an appropriately. After this act of the character, the layout of the props and scene lights will enter to the scene components. Those things help to audiences can understand narrative of work and emotion that producer want to send. Expressing their emotions especially using the lights by adjusting the colors and contrast makes audience to concentrate on work and understand naturally. This lighting technique clearly appears on early year theaters stage of England and Rembrandt's paintings. Properly dividing and controlling the lights dramatically increases the beauty of the work elements to express a variety of emotions such as worries and fear. Therefore, it can be evolve depending on director's intent of using lights on his work. Lights can increase involvement of human emotion through basic features that cognition of object, visualization of space-time and by artistic method in the product. This study will examine the role and how to use lighting to express the proper sentiment based on the narrative of the work. Making research named "Lighting Research of 3D animated film which applying light features to express emotion" previous study and have to combine emotional vocabulary and emotion-based theory for classifying the emotional language that can be applied on 3D animation. And choosing most emotional scene from 3D animation for analyze how they used lighting to expressing emotions. Directors trying to show up about the light role through light method that matched perfectly with an emotional language. Expecting this research work of directing 3D animations light for expressing emotional feelings will be continue successfully.

• Cartoon and Animation Studies
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• s.36
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• pp.303-323
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• 2014

After TV Broadcasting service started, American Animation Industry changed dramatically. Through 1930th to 1940th, Major Animation Studios made every effort to adapt to new Animation production environment. Those efforts led rapid improvement of Animation again by succession of heritage in the golden age of American Animation. in spite of successful outcome, some critic like Bernard Oma blamed Animation on repeated chasing pattern, glamorized violence with exaggeration and humor caused by lack of idea. Nevertheless the decade passed by, achievement of the era still have influenced today. The animated films of the age have attractive power in comparison to today's works and Chuck Jones was a glamorous one of the age-leading masters. "Tom and Jerry" series, "Bugs Bunny", "Daffy Duck", and so on, he planned, designed characters and directed those masterpieces. In this study, episodes of "Tom and Jerry" that had been directed by Chuck Jones during 1963 and 1967 are analysed in the view point of direction style. In recently, Korean Animation Industry seems to be accumulated power for rising again by showing new animations that are adapted to new media. Thus, this study aims to give an idea for the new vision of Korean Animation through analysing Chuck Jones' Masterpieces.

• Journal of Convergence for Information Technology
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.101-109
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• 2017

This study was undertaken to understand how reference groups, convenience and pursuit of information affect subscription-based Webtoon service usage through reliability and curiosity, through which this study provides some suggestions for developing Webtoons and increasing profitability of service providers. Therefore, the reliability and feasibility analysis were conducted for 449 readers who used the paid webtoon more than once. In addition, the causality test was conducted to verify the research model. As a result of the research, this study shows the following implications: First, it is recommended that webtoon service providers produce webtoons with the webtoonists who have more expertise developing new webtoons. Second, webtoon service providers should focus on advertising during the episodes that are currently being subscribed to, or in the next episodes in order to stimulate the usage needs of readers rather than focusing on advertising the products related to the characters and their development and sales. Third, webtoon service providers are supposed to develop webtoons by using materials that can appear in everyday life. Fourth, webtoon service providers should continue their research in order to develop high quality products and express the unique characteristics of their advertisements by increasing investment in the development of products and advertising.

• Journal of Information Technology Applications and Management
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• v.28 no.6
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• pp.69-85
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• 2021

In the era of the 4th Industrial Revolution, not only artificial intelligence, big data, robots, and biotechnology, but also cultural industries that require human creativity will lead. Among the cultural industries, the animation industry has high industrial utilization value due to its high connection with other industries. Among them, animation characters play the most important role as the subject leading the story of animation. In particular, the villain character not only serves as a medium for the main character to lead the story, but also captivates the audience with a different presence from the main character, adding to the fun and completeness of the animation. These characters consist of visual elements such as form and color, of which color is a tool that effectively conveys the character's personality and role to the audience, and is the first visual element to be considered in delicately describing the character's emotions and the relationship between characters. Therefore, this study attempts to analyze the color of the villain character. To this end, we will select eight Disney animations to derive the characteristics of the villain character's color by analyzing the color, value, chroma, and color association of the colors used in the Disney villain character. As a result of the analysis, the colors mainly used by Disney to convey the villain's image were red (R) and Orange (YR), and there was no difference depending on the times or animation production methods. Second, the brightness of Disney villain characters appeared to be the same medium/famous regardless of the times and production methods, and the frequency of use of high brightness was very low. In terms of saturation, the frequency of use of high and low saturation was high. Third, blackish (Bk), Strong (S), dull (Dl), and deep (Dp) tones were mainly used for tones. In particular, in recent 3D animations than previously produced 2D animations, the use of low chroma and the high black mixing rate increased. Fourth, it can be seen that Disney uses color as a visual method to more clearly express the psychology of the villain character using color association. In conclusion, the color selection of animation characters should be carefully considered as a tool to convey the character's personality, role, and emotion beyond simply using color, and the color selection of characters using color associations and symbols strengthens the narrative structure. It is hoped that this study will help analyze and select the character color of animation.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.18 no.12
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• pp.118-129
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• 2018

In AI chatbot service via a messenger, a profile image of the chatbot is the first thing that users see to communicate with the chatbot. This profile image not only manages an impression about the profile owner in SNS on followers, but also makes an important impression about chatbot services on users. Thus motivated, this study investigates proper profile images tailored for the types of chatbot services and users. Specifically, I reviewed the preferred images and expressions of chatbots for each purpose of chatbot service. Then, in a case study, I collected and analyzed the representative chatbot profile images for the purpose of fun and counseling. The profile images are categorized as robot, human, animal, and abstract images. Based on these categories, I surveyed the preferred profile image of the chatbot service in either the text type or image type alternatives. For the purpose of fun, in the text version, I found that both men and women preferred a human image to others. However, in the image version, men preferred woman and robot images while women preferred cute animation character and robot images. For counseling services, both men and women preferred woman and animal images most, which is similar to the results of the text version of questionnaires as well. While both genders consistently preferred real photo images, women tend to like abstract images more than men do. I expect that the results of this study would be useful to develop the proper profile images of AI chatbot for each service purpose.

• Journal of Korea Entertainment Industry Association
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.97-106
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• 2020

The mainstream of cinema animated film in today's world is the animated film produced by film companies such as Disney, DreamWorks, and 20th Century Fox. These animated films are influenced by Hollywood blockbusters, high cost, and big-budget, which have brought a gorgeous and splendid audio-visual feast to the global audience. DreamWorks Studios founded in 1994 has become noted in just over ten years. It has produced many high-quality animated works which are well-known all over the world. This achievement is no doubt inseparable from its superior external animation industry environment, and benefited from the American animation industry which commercially operated for almost 100 years. However, in addition to these external environmental factors, DreamWorks' achievements have also come from the extraordinary and superior creation of the animated film scripts, strong narrative script ensures the logic and appeal of animated films. This article takes Kung Fu Panda series, Shrek series, The Prince of Egypt, The Croods, Chicken Run, Megamind and other representative films produced by DreamWorks as key analysis object, using Jean Baudrillard's simulation and imaging theory, Syd Field's screenwriting skills, and Hegel's aesthetic point of view, explores the Creative Style of DreamWorks' Animated Film Script which contains the following four aspects. The script is exaggerated and novel, and the subject matter is rich and targeted. The script creation is very imaginative and can fully express the visual beauty. The structure of the story is well controlled, the space comes from reality but full of imagination. The characters have distinctive personality and the dialogue is moderated but forceful.

• Journal of Popular Narrative
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.127-150
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• 2021

This study focuses on analyzing the epic characteristics of a korean sports cartoon called "Burning Ground" in the 1970s. Through this, we would like to reveal that only "Burning Ground" has a unique narrative. We hope that such research will accumulate and serve as the basis for the study of Korean sports cartoon. In the 1970s and 1980s, Korean sports cartoons were narratives of the main characters. The story of the family is central to the narrative. Family revenge is mainly the central narrative. Plural narratives are serious, and sports act as auxiliary narratives. It uses 'Spocon', a characteristic of Japanese sports cartoons, to show its efforts to get revenge. Therefore, it is extremely rare to use professional knowledge in Korean sports cartoons in the 1970s. Burning Ground uses an escalating system to construct incremental narratives. The three-dimensional narrative is composed by utilizing various narratives of surrounding characters. The use of expertise in football is a feature of the 1990s, and showing this in the 1970s means that the work is ahead of its time. There are limitations of Japanese cartoon theft and plagiarism. However, through this, it provides evidence to examine the relationship between Korea and Japan. And timeless epic speciality must be recognized. The study is meaningful in that it can broaden the perspective of Korean cartoon research in the 1970s.