Looking at the results from the focus group and outside questioning I did in regards to my first artefact, asking people what emotion the character was conveying and what aspect of the character gave them this impression, e.g. a hand gesture or back arch, there were a few common occurrences around what people said.
Hands were a key point that people said directed their opinion of the emotion, with their placement being indicative of the characters emotion. Whilst this was a main response from those I asked I cannot be certain whether this has anything to do with the particular poses I chose, however I feel like it being the majority reason for a lot of people is something to look at.
A possibility to take this further would be to look at hand gestures on there own and see the whether they alone can convey emotion and indicate more to an audience.
One step during the focus group session I did was to use questionnaire forms for people to fill out rather than immediate verbal feedback. My reasoning for this came from an initial test of my images where people were influenced by others responses prior to giving their own resulting in multiple similar answers.
To avoid this the form meant people weren't 'copying' others answers and gave me a mixed variety of results or, more to the point, produced several matches of responses, strengthening the ability to state clearly whether or not a image worked in conveying the desired emotion.
In terms of answering my hypothesis, whether or not a still image can be used to convey the emotion of a character, the majority of images received the correct answer for the emotion, however the more positive emotions and ones such as shock or surprise didn't have as great of a result.
The main reason for this I believe is that positive emotions are more based on pace and the way someone moves rather than just the way the body is affected when static/held, like with negative emotions (sadness, anger) where the body slumps or stiffens in response to this. Shock and surprise are also like this due to them being motion based reactions, a quick jump or start in response to something, and can not be shown in a held form.
The next stage for my second artefact will be to move on to conveyance with animation, where I can look more in depth at the emotions that had a weaker result e.g. happiness, shock, surprise, and explore how motion has an effect on the conveyance, using aspects such as timing and spacing to experiment with different aspects.
