2.5 DimentionLiterature review & MethodologyN0532185: Anzu Suzuki

Introduction

The structure of this work is as follows. First, I will start my discussion by considering how to define the term, virtual character by looking at two different types of virtual objects: robot and visual images. Then I will consider the relationship between virtual character and human being: how the virtual character have been adopted in society and how they interacted

and have been used by using a case of Hatsune Miku as example. Following the literature review, in methodology, I will explore the new branding strategy which uses the animation in much more sophisticated and complex ways. To prove the effectiveness of using animation, I will show several example of how animation has been used successfully in business as a case study. In the end, I will talk about further research.

Japan is often said to have the world’s biggest market share in regards to its entertainment industry. Indeed, the Japanese government reported that the market size of its industry has risen to 12 billion yen, which is the world’s second biggest market (Ministry of Economy, 2011). From the above reason, in Japan, the media mix between the entertainment industry and other industry is active, and especially in the fashion industry this activity seems to be remarkable. For instance, in 2013, Gucci collaborated with Manga drawer Hirohiko Araki. This collaboration was one of the approaches to display the new Gucci theme called “Crews collection” by using Araki’s Manga, called “Jo-Jo” in the window display (Gucci, 2013). This advertisement was used not only in Japan but all over the world. Another example is the animation series called “Gankutsuou”, this is the original animation of the French novel, “Le Comte de Monte-Cristo”. What made this animation unique was that Anna Sui did some costume design for the character in the animation (Gankutsuou, 2004). On the other hand, these media mixes use animation, or manga in this case, only for superficial aspects. In fact, these collaborations are straightforward for the consumers which makes it superficial: the fictional character wears the clothes that exist in the actual brand or vice versa (actual brand creates clothes that been inspired from fictional character), they know it is a collaboration between the animations. However this method works only in a limited market and also the effect is short-lived. Therefore, this study has formulated a newly coined term the virtual

character and by using this, I will try to explore more appropriate uses of the virtual character in fashion brand.

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Aim and objective of this project:Build the new interaction between the brand and consumers

and investigate the effective strategy to appeal to the

consumers in emotion level.

- Clarify what is the virtual character

- Analyse how the virtual character have been used as

marketing strategy recently; the advantages and disadvantages

of its use

- Identify the reason why the uses of the virtual character will be

effective for the brands to appeal to its consumers

Contents

Literature review01: Determining the Virtual Character

Emotive effects on Visual imagesRelationship between Robot and Human

In between the reality and virtuality: The virtual Character

02: Social connection between the humanThe Vocaloid: Hatsune Miku Social activity of Hatsune Miku

01: Fall in love with an animation CG-animation and Cel-animation

Methodology

Potential viewer of animation

02: Introduction animation

03: Plans of the further research

Bibliography

Introduction

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Literature review

The term, virtual character looks simple, as we have heard these words commonly, however it is more complex than it might sound. The complexity of this term comes from the character of these words, which contain multiple and metamorphosis meaning, for instance, in Japan the word “character” is used to describe an individual’s role within a fictional setting, such as a story or play: as in English it contains psychological aspects as well (Oxford Dictionary, 11th ed.). Moreover, the virtual is described as technological concept and it is recognized as existing in polar opposition to the real, yet this wider context makes the word highly ambiguous; the meaning of this word depend on how people perceive the nature of virtuality (Woolgra, 2002). Even though the virtual character is a highly ambiguous term, still this term primarily describes a particular object. To make this term more meaningful and suitable in the project, we need to discuss what we mean by the virtual character. As stated in the introduction, this will be done by looking into how robot and visualised character have been formulated and effect human’s life on emotional aspects. The reason why these two objects have been chosen to form the virtual character is that these objects are a mixture of the reality and the virtuality. As Woolgra (2002) has stated, virtuality works well when its sits alongside the real. For example, to take the case of the paperless office, communication in the office has been automatized and computerized (for example, e-mail) but still paper communication (such as memo and notes) is playing an important role. This indicates that the virtual character should be highly positioned within the space between real and virtual as well. As in this project, we are aiming to use the

virtual character to represent new forms of interrelationship between consumers and brands, it needs to be integrated into people’s social life. In other word, the

virtual character has to position its place not only in virtual world but also in the real activity of social life. Furthermore, Plato’s theory of Ideas is my bases for choosing which object to define as the virtual character: whatever the answer is to its enquiry, it is evident that we are considering soul and body as separate matters. That is to say that the

Over the decades that the information engineering methodology has developed, a multitude of scientists have tried to incorporate real objects into the virtual world. In fact, nowadays many objects that exist in the virtual world are similar to objects which exist in reality. For instance, you can raise a virtual pet (Talking Ginger) or even meet a virtual boyfriend (Boyfriend maker) via your smartphone. These technological improvements make the transition between virtuality and reality much more seamless. To put it more concretely, the clear borderline between the virtual world and the real world is nearly disappearing; people have started to combine the virtual and reality, their value is now equivalent (Ootsuka, 2012). That is to say, the penetration of virtual technology has created new types of interaction. On the bases of these theory, this research will find out how the interaction between consumers and the virtual

character have influenced the fashion brand and investigate the effective strategy to appeal to the consumers in emotion level by using the virtual character.

01: Determining the Virtual Character

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When researchers tried to create a robot which perfectly imitate humans, they found that humans were much resisted to the power of robots. There was a big emotional distance there (this phenomena is called: The Uncanny Valle). This phenomena happens because not only were robots less common in daily life as now, but the robot felt like too perfect an object for humans to use. When the Siri (Speech Interpretation and Recognition Interface) was introduced into the iPhone in 2011, the inventor tried to add additional movement into its interaction to help consumers satisfied with using them (Geller, 2012). Geller (2012) points out that Siri does not simply answer yes or no to questions, but it has own characteristics which enable it to communicate with the user and find the most accurate answer. For instance, on 31rd December 2013, I experimented with Siri to see how it would respond when I said: “Happy new year”. Siri responded: “Happy new year. But isn’t it bit early to say so?” Also, when I asked for Otoshidama (the money given as a New Year’s gift in Japan) Siri responded: “I don’t have any money with me right now.” I requested Otoshidama three times and each of the response was different. If we consider the smartphone as just a tool, this daily conversation is unnecessary. However if we perceive the smartphone as a new form of relationship between human and robot, this interaction function is important. The additional function makes us more comfortable using robots in daily life rather than being "perfect". What we desire is something that we can feel close to as human in emotional aspects. The above cases illustrate how the robot could be adopt into daily life. In the past, robot was an uncommon object in our life, it was considered as an object that perfectly imitates humans. However as the years have passed, robots have become much more accepted by human than they used to be; our attitude towards robots have been dramatically changed. The Robot is now something to support a comfortable life and not something that is independent from it. The relationship with human and a robot is complex as we might think of. A robot has now become our partner or even something similar to a pet. A robot is not a necessary object but it is targeted to support our life and make us feel much better; and we unwittingly had been relying on them much more than we imagine. the virtual character should be close to these relationship with human as well. It should not be something separate from and independent of daily life, it has to be something that lives within the daily life and make the human feel: “I want it”.

tangible body is just the container of its intangible soul (Taya, 2006). By using this theory, if we regard the soul as the virtual character, and the body as the bridge between the virtual character and consumers, I would consider that the objects stated above (robot and visualised character) would be appropriate. I presume that all of these objects are in between virtuality and reality, however the degrees of virtuality and reality are all different.

Historically, robot were considered to be something separate from our daily life. When we wanted to operate them, we had to control them to make them work. The human was in control of the robot, and this made the robot something which did not fit completely with the human world (Kaku, 2003). Also, the word “robot” gave the impression of being humanoid rather than being what it actually is: highly functional electronic object. A Robot is something that imitates what a human can do, but it is obviously not human, it just appears to copy human behaviour but we feel something is missing. This sense of discomfort makes us think of the robot as something fictional and not related to our social life. In fact, when Honda created the life size humanoid “P2” in 1996 that walked on two feet, following this case, most humanoid researchers focused on the output of the robot: how it could imitate humans movements and looks as human as much as possible, and they never considered how to build comfortable relationships between robots and human being in the real world (Kaneko, et al., 2011). However, nowadays, there are robots everywhere and they are closely integrated into our daily lives. Who could ever have imagined that it would become common for people to carry high-spec cell phones that can behave like a computer? Now the interaction between robot and human has changed; the interface between them has become more diverse than it used to be, and the stereotype of it is disappearing (Kaku, 2003).

As the world has become much more used to robots, the new kinds of relationships between robots have been built up. Often all these robots are described as smart, such as “smart” phone; this word indicates that the robot is not just a passive object but can act like a human being (Dunne and Raby, 2001).

Relationship between Robot and Human

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Visual images, such as picture book, painting, magazine, comic book and so on have a long history (Abbott and Forceville, 2011). Even though technology for illustration had been developed, nevertheless hand produced images have never disappeared and are always there to influence viewers in many aspects. In this section, by taking comic books as an example of visual images, I will clarify how these images affected viewers’ emotions and consider how they could be used to create the virtual character for my project.

The first consideration is how the viewer understands the meanings of visual images. Visual images are socially semiotic objects and work as semiotic codes (Feng and O’Halloran, 2012). So to understand their meaning, the viewers need cultural and historical knowledge, but the visual images are not always universal. As each country has its own culture and historical background, it is obvious that semiotic systems are represented in different ways (Serafini, 2011). However Feng and O’Halloran’s (2012) research showed that representation of emotion in visual images is mainly stylistic. This means that while the semiotic codes of images may be different, we can understand their meaning from their style. For example, semiotic expression of anger differs by nations, however the facial expression of the image (angry face: eye brow goes up and mouse shuts) is universal so the viewer can understand its meaning (Feng and O’Halloran, 2012). From this, we can understand that visual images exist in the space between reality and virtuality. The visual image itself is fictional so it can be categorised as virtual, but to understand its context it is important for the viewers to understand the social semiotic codes that represent real life. A more elaborate example is the Japanese Manga. Manga is a Japanese style picture-based publication that ranks with the American comic and the French “bande dessinee”. In the year 2000, MEXT (The Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology) announced in a white paper that the Manga is one of the most important literary product of contemporary Japanese culture; from this we can understand that the Manga in Japan belong to a highly socialized culture (Ishima, 2007). What is remarkable about Manga is that while basically the story is formulated by combining visual images and dialog, it also uses visual forms of onomatopoeic sounds. Kimura and Masuda (2001)

Emotive effects on Visual images

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Robot is also similar to slice of cake and a cup tea. It is unnecessary to maintain our body, but we feel much happier if we eat and drink them. However these are tend to be considered as unhealthy food.

argue that following Tezuka Osamu (the inventor of current story style manga), visual onomatopoeia has been used more frequently than before and it has also been used in the form of symbols rather than actual words. In facts, recently many manga use unique original onomatopoeic forms. Take the pirates manga: One-piece, as an example. One-piece tends to use the onomatopoeic form

(Don!!) when it wants to emphasize a dramatic scene or when the new character is shown. This onomatopoeia exists in Japan but the meaning is slightly

different. is the onomatopoeic form to describe hitting something in Japanese; it may be similar to tap-tap in English but a louder sound. It is easy for

a Japanese viewer to understand as the emphasized symbol rather than using the word form, because of their cultural knowledge; and also from the background knowledge of grammar and experience of reading Manga. However these meaning are quite difficult for people of other cultures to understand since these onomatopoeic forms work in a symbolic way and there is no equivalent in other languages (Kimura and Masuda, 2001). On the other hand, images of emotion like tears dropping from the eyes or eyes popping out from the face are highly stylised symbols, but as stated in the above paragraph, viewers tend to understand their meaning by reference to their own similar semiotic codes (Feng and O’Halloran, 2011: Kimura and Masuda, 2001).

The above case indicates that viewers need to achieve viewing comprehension to understand the meaning of visual images. Meaning relates to cultural and historical background; we need to be aware that some images used are culture-specific and have different meanings in different culture. As the visual image is a fictional object but the viewer is a real human being, this misunderstanding could affect the virtual character as well. If we think about using the virtual

character at a multinational level, it is important to consider how to build up its images visually. By taking the case of Manga, even though its imagery is highly domestic, it been translated into different languages and read around the world (Ministry of Economy, 2011). It might not be necessary to recreate the visual imagery for each culture; however we need to bear in mind the risk that some culture may not understand the images presented, or may misinterpret them.

One-piece ep173Emphasizing a dramatic scene

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I will now attempt to clarify what is the virtual character in this project. From the above two cases, we can see that each case has strong connections with reality but at the same time, it has been thought of as fictional (separated) from our daily life. As long as the recipient of the virtual object is in the real world, the gap between virtual and real could not easily become closer. Nowadays robots and visual images are targeted at being incorporated into our daily life and they are often successfully building comfortable relationships with human beings, but this does not mean that they are building their own independent world in reality. If we work within a reality construct, it is not possible for everything that we would like to happen, to actually materialize; and we can sometimes feel disappointed by that. However a virtuality allows things to materialise that we are not expecting but wish to become possible. This sounds similar to the word “imitation” but in fact, virtuality has much stronger power to realise its expectation (Murayama, 2009). Virtuality has the power to affect reality; this is what the virtual character would do. It is not a matter of whether the virtual

character is fictional or real, it should not be categorised, for example as robot or visual images; there does not even need to be any tangible output.

The Venn diagram in next page illustrates, how the virtual character works in reality. The robot and visual images construct their world and interact with the reality [Fig. 1] but the virtual character is not confirmed by the real world [Fig 2]; it is creating its own inner space and implicating every other object produced in reality and virtuality (such as robots and visual images). This describes that the virtual character belongs to both, the real and the virtual world but is not independent of either. The platform of the virtual character will be multifarious and different for each person; the forms will differ according to how a person thinks about the virtual character. This means that the virtual character constructs its world in each human’s mind and does not just build their own world in reality; this is how the virtual character will be defined in this project.

In between the reality and virtuality: The virtual CharacterFig. 1

reality virtuality

Fig. 2

virtualityreality

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As stated in the above section, the term virtual character is a new type of category that is willing to become an effective method for the brand to interact with consumers. This means that it is difficult to find exact examples of how the

virtual character can be used in practical level. However, the singing synthesizer

application: Hatsune Miku has a unique social interaction method that it could be potentially used as an example for this project. In this chapter, by using Hatsune Miku as a case study, I would like to discuss how the virtual character could be used in a social setting and how it can be possibly build new interactions with human beings.

02: Social connection between the human

Hatsune Miku is a singing synthesizer computer program released in 2007, developed by the company, Crypton (Crypton Future Media). This program uses Yamaha technology called Vocaloid 2 and Vocaloid 3, which lets the computer program turn inputted lyrics into audio and replicates the singing voice of a living human being (Sasaki, 2008). This application has become a best seller in Japan; when it launched in August 2007, it soon had become the top-selling computer program on Amazon.jp and in within one month, it has sold up to 3000 units. Normally it would be considered a success if it sold 1000 copies, and indeed these levels of sales are out-standing. (Okada, 2008). Previously, when you want to create the song, you need a vocalist to sing to the music. However, this application has become the singer itself and allow more amateurs to join

the music industry. What you need is the application, Hatsune Miku and basic knowledge of the music, or you might not even need foundation knowledge, you just need to type in the lyric and tone of melody you want to create; we could say

that Hatsune Miku made the music industry change and mature (Noyasu, 2008).

What is remarkable about this application is that it is not only make the music

industry change but the characteristic of Hatsune Miku have been formulated by multiple of users through internet. When Crypton first launched Hatsune Miku, they putted illustration of a future-cyber-imaged girl with a name Hatsune Miku in a package, and eventually this was all the information they had provided. Users need to use their own imaginations to characterize Hatsune Miku by its illustration and actual “voice”. So what users actually done is that when

somebody created the music sang by Hatsune Miku , other person who listened to the music might put some illustration influenced by the song or even somebody might produce the video-crip from combined information of song

and illustration; eventually that is how the Hatsune Miku had been characterised till now (Hamasaki, Nishimura and Takeda, 2010). In fact, if a Hatsune Miku fan thought of her, she will always be holding spring onions; this is came from multiple user’s imaginations and not from the original information. Wataru

Sasaki, the inventor of Hatsune Miku thinks that Hatsune Miku is between the reality and virtuality. He mentioned in an interview that: “She as Vocaloid application doesn’t have any tangible body or soul insides, but if we treat her as

singer, singer do have tangible body and soul. Hatsune Miku is fictional but real to somebody in one point (Sasaki, 2008).” This proof that Hatsune Miku had been thought to create its own characteristics by collaborative creation by multiple of users from its conceptual stages. Now there are other series in this voice singing application and there been categories in the Vocaloid franchise. In the past, Vocaloid was the name of the singing synthesizer (application) but now, because of the success of

Hatsune Miku, it has become the name of the genre of music that uses singing synthesizing software. Vocaliod is not only includes the song that been created but it is also includes images, video-clips and lots of other types of media that

been influenced by singing synthesizers starting from Hatsune Miku (Hamasaki, Nishimura and Takeda, 2010). The overall collaborative creations by multiple

fans has now formed the iconic characteristics of the Hatsune Miku franchise. By paying attention to this movement, it would give some signs to how the virtual

character can be treated to the viewer in reality.

The Vocaloid: Hatsune Miku

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To consider the uses of the virtual character on a more practical level, I would like to use an example from the electronic opera: “THE END” performed by

Hatsune Miku.. THE END was performed in Tokyo and Paris in 2013; the performer of this opera was Hatsune Miku and she sings and acts only by herself in the opera. The opera had been produced by Keiichro Shibuya: the electronic music artist

in Japan. Opera was using 3D multiscreen technology to make Hatsune Miku looks real to the audience. Also in this opera, Hatsune Miku wears clothes that is been designed by Marc Jacobs and sold in Louis Vuitton as spring/summer 2013 collection (THE END, 2013).

The unique point of this opera is that they are trying to bring back Hatsune Miku again asthe virtual character to interact with audience rather than treating her as a virtual idol. Recently, even though Hatsune Miku does not have any personalities, many users dreamt about Hatsune Miku as their perfect virtual idol. In fact, Hatsune Miku concert: “Mikupa!” had been held 3 times in Japan; many “fans” of Hatsune Miku goes to her concert and listen to her songs (Mikupa, 2013). Eventually, it is using same technique as THE END: 3D multiscreen technology

is used to project Hatsune Miku and since it is a live concert, the background music is played by real musicians. When THE END had been showed, many

Hatsune Miku fan expected something similar to ”Mikupa!” but it was far away from their expectation. The reputation of “THE END” was similar in Japan

and France. The audience who is the massive “fan” of Hatsune Miku was feeling depressed about their “dream virtual idol” been spoiled. On the other hand,

audience who do not know about Hatsune Miku extoll the opera (The Huffington post, 2013). The reputations differs by how they treat Hatsune Miku. To the fan of Hatsune Miku, there are strong identities, so they feel disappointed if the personality used was different from their identity they had become accustomed

to. However, to the audience watching a Hatsune Miku for the first time, it was just one of the elements in the electoronic opera THE END, which will let them

create their own image about Hatsune Miku. The strong standards set by fans limits how the virtual character can be used.

When the first time Crypton launched Hatsune Miku, its personality was leaning towards each user, and that is the reason why it had become famous in one

aspect, so fans could imagine their own Hatsune Miku. However the collaborative

creations made such a strong identity out of Hatsune Miku, that if any characteristics deviates from the established canon, it will cause much anger

amongst fans. For Hatsune Miku to be used in much wider context, this stereotype should be removed; and that was been done by Keiichiro Shibuya through THE

END. He attempted to create his own image of Hatsune Miku into the opera and created his own world. The theme of the opera was about: “life and death”, “is

there any end (= death) to the virtual character: Hatsune Miku?” (Nagasaka, 2013). This paradoxical theme breaks down the images of Hatsune Miku being the virtual idol in reality and asking to the audience again: what actually is Hatsune Miku to each person.

Whether Hatsune Miku marketing approach is effective or not to the virtual

character for this project, it do gives us some hint of how the virtual character can

be developed and affect the real world. How the Hatsune Miku forms its world in reality is similar to how the virtual character need to finds its place in reality.

This movement and effects that Hatsune Miku had given can be used for the virtual

character in practical stage. The actual method of using the virtual character in reality will be examined later again in methodology.

Social activity of Hatsune Miku

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THE END

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Mikupa!

Methodology

To achieve the aim and objective successfully, this project needs to put more weight onto the primary research. As the main purpose of the secondary research was to define what is the virtual character, in the primary research phase I will focus on considering the uses of the

virtual character on a practical level; and this will be done by creating an animation. The structure and the target achievements of the individual research will be discussed in the later section: “Plans of the further research” but before that, I would like discuss about the reason why the animation would be the most effective method of using the virtual character.

The traits of animation is its highly symbolised images. The images in animation has been deformed to the part where they want to emphasise. Compared to the live-action, animation clearly shows the viewer what the aim in the story (Numata, 2012). Also, the most remarkable things about the animation is that people more likely to adore its visuals than the actual story. If we talk about an animation’s visuals, it is mainly about the visual design of the characters but it also includes background and story setting; anything that is shown visually makes people fall in love with the animation as soon as they lay eyes on it (Numata, 2012). When people fall in love with the animation, they start to ignore the inconsistency of the story. However, this is difficult to cause in the live-action. Since the live-action strongly connects to the reality, any inconsistency distracts the viewer’s attention. The viewer tries to establish consistency with the knowledge they know about in reality, but any small inconsistency makes physical unease bigger and distracts its emotion. On the other hand, this does not tend to happen in animation. Since animation consists of symbolised images, viewers attempts their own interpretation and ignore its inconsistency; this is same as how the viewer recognises and understands the visual images. From the point of view that animation clearly illustrates the aim and also avoids inconsistency to happen, I would express my opinion that animation is the best format to present the virtual character.

01: Fall in love with an animation

The live-action illustrates reality exactly as it is portrayed so it is inappropriate to this project. As the same meaning photograph is inappropriate as well. However there is possibility of using other visual images rather than limit to animation; but there is another essential reason why the animation is appropriate. Firstly, animation caches people’s attention more than visual images: since the animation is “moving” and it also has a “sound”. Also, compared to

other still images, animation have much wider range of uses. Rather than creating the animation from still images, it is much easier to create still images from the animation. Moreover, original music for animations allows the viewer to connect with its animation when they listen to the music. In fact, it is effective for music industry to create the theme song for animation to advertise their new singer (Masuda, 2011). Moreover, nowadays it is only America and Japan who has animation as a worldwide industry. America is now shifting to CG (Computer Graphic) animation, such as “Toy Story” from Pixar, “Shrek” from DreamWorks, on the other hand Japan’s main stream is still Cel-animation (for instance, “Spirited away” from Studio Ghibli) (Masuda, 2011). This illustrates that main stream of animation today is the Cel-animation or the CG-animation, and in this project I will focus on the Cel-animation. The reason why I will use the Cel-animation is not only technically it is near impossible to create CG-animation, but also CG-animation has similarities to live filming which I want to avoid using. The reason why America’s animation have shifted to CG-animation is that the cost was much cheaper compared to Cel-animation, but more likely that CG-animation attracts adults much more than traditional Cel-style animation. When the first CG-animation “Toy Story” was been released in 1995, it was not only children who were so absorbed to its story, but it also ensnared the hearts of adults as well (Masuda, 2011). What made the CG-animation successful is that the CG-animation was closely connected to the live filming. CG-animation looks realistic compared to Cel-animation, and that made the adults in America to think that it is different from the stereotypes they had that cartoons (animation) is for children. However there is the risk to the CG-animation being close to the real. As in the literature review: robot section, we discussed about the uncanny valley, this do happens to the CG-animation as well (Masuda, 2011). In fact when Masuda (2011) researched who is the main character in CG animation from 1995 till 2010, it was only 30.3% that the human is the main character of the story; most of the main character was animal or the monster. To risk hedge this revulsion, CG-animation is not the best format to this project.

CG-animation and Cel-animation

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The problem which I have to consider next is the risk of the viewer incorrectly labelling animation as being specifically for children. However, I find it dubious that this can be applied to every adult. From 20th February 2009 till 31st January 2010, NTT data (the Japanese system integration company) conducted a survey with AJA (The Association of Japanese Animation) about the animation that had been illegally uploaded on the video sharing sites (Youtube and Niko-Niko Douga), P2P and Cyberlockers. Data was gathered from 21 title (46 episodes), as the total of 30 hours. It was found from the result that there are 25,350 of animation that fits the requirement and it had been replayed 2,840,000 times (Masuda, 2011). This indicates that there are potential number of adults are watching the animation. The internet, let the people to have a chance to know the value of the animation without labelling as being specifically for children. From the above reason, I concern it is worth examining the uses of the animation.

Potential viewer of animation

02: Introduction animation

Further in the research, I will create the introduction animation to advertise to the students (the detail is written in the next section, “Plans of the further research: stage1”). Introduction animation will use the idea of the art project: “no ghost just a shell”. This project is introduced by Philippe Parreno and Pierre Huyghe in 1999. They acquired the copyright of the character: Annlee from the Japanese agency Kworks. They offered Annlee as free material to the artists, to be used for their own stories (Philippe and Pierre, 1999).

The problem of referring to Hatsune Miku as example in this stage is that

Hatsune Miku potentially has strong key visual that will affects the introduction animation. Even though Hatsune Miku ’s characteristics have been formulated by multiple of users, still there are strong image of “future-cyber” which limits the viewer’s imagination. As in this stage, the visual of the virtual character should be nondescript as Annlee, so it will allow to examine how the virtual character can develop and form its characteristics through the projects.

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Hello,My name is Anzu Suzuki, Japanese NTU MA Fashion Future student.Right now I am doing my research called “2.5 Dimension –An investigation into how the virtual character interact to consumers”, and looking for some Fashion design or Textile student who could help me use your collection of works in my research. If you are interested please see details below:

Who I am looking for:-Any student who is creating collection of fashion work and fine with me using their work as part of my research -Who can take a time and talk with me about the concept of their work (interviewing)Term:-in accordance with the situation (around May for 2~3hr) Aim of this project:To develop the new interactive ways of communication between customer and fashion brand. In this project, I will use the virtual character to see how the customer’s emotion changes when they see the brand concept by visual.Methodology:I will create animation based on the brand conceptReference websites: -Control bear: http://www.controlbear.com/

All the work that I borrowed in this research will be used only as one of the MA project and not in any other purpose. If you are interested or have any question please feel free to send me the e-mail: anzu.suzuki2012@my.ntu.ac.uk

Thank you,Anzu Suzuki

As stated in the first paragraph of methodology, animation will be the crucial part in this project. However the goal of this project is to create the new interaction strategy between the brand and consumers, and not to create the animation itself. Animation and the virtual character is just the element to achieve its goal. Through this project all the animation will take the form of “Hand-drawn mad” and not in proper forms of the Cel-animation. “Hand-drawn mad” is one of the Japanse amateur animation technique that attempting the several story board (and sometime few animation) with the music. This technique was been developed through the Japanese social media called: “Nico-Nico Douga”, and nowadays it is becoming one of the main stream of armatures movie creation in Japan (Hamasaki, Nishimura and Takeda, 2010). Sine there are time constraints, I propose this strategy will be the most appropriate way to create the animation. The further research will be done mainly in 3 stages:

In the first stage, I will create the introduction animation based on the e-mail I have written. This is to ask a volunteers to the students who is studying fashion or textile design in Nottingham Trent University. As the aim of this project is to build the new interaction strategy, it is important to know what the designer think about their work. From my experience of creating the art work, design student tend to have strong concept through their work. Even though there are not professional, it is still worth asking for a volunteers. Moreover, this stage will be fundamental part of the investigation to see whether animation and the virtual character will let the people’s attention or not.

In the final stage, based on the animation I have created in stage:2, questionnaires and interview will be taken on a multinational level to find out how the viewer felt about the virtual character and whether the reaction differs by the culture. The case of visual images illustrated that there are possibility of getting different impression when they see something unfamiliar in their culture. If we consider this risk, it is appropriate to get the interview and questioner especially from Japanese and British people. Japan has a long history of watching animation and it has been highly socialised in their culture. Also, the example of Hatsune Miku has illustrated that they have a breeding ground of accepting the virtual character. We could expect positive reaction from them. On the other hand, it is uncommon for grownups to watch animation in Britain. Compared to America, Britain did not developed in the animation industry, which means it will be the best example of the people who has no knowledge of animation and the virtual character. By taking the questionnaires and interview from these countries, it will be effective to define whether this approach (using the

virtual character as one strategy) should be taken domestically in Japan or can be used worldwide.

In the second stage, I will do an individual interview to the designer who I asked to volunteer in stage one. In this stage, I will ask the designer about the concept and theme of their work. Based on the interview, I will create the virtual character that illustrates the designer’s concept. At the same time I will start creating animation as well. I would like to emphasize that the difference between the animation and the virtual character is that virtual character is the identity of whole work or brand; on the other hand, animation is just the format to show the virtual character. This stage should be finished by June.

03: Plans of the further research

Stage:1

Stage:2

Stage:3

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