An analysis of motion features of different characters in Nihon-buyo dance using motion capture

This research was intended to investigate the relationship between body motion and Kansei, or emotional features, conveyed by motion. A work of Japanese traditional dance (Nihon- buyo) in which a performer plays several different roles or characters has been used for a subject of investigation. Through the psychological rating experiment observing a CG character animation in an abstract representation, we found that the observer recognized the impressional factors of the body motions of each individual character or role based on the four aspects: dasiaactivitypsila, dasiapotencypsila, dasiagenderpsila and dasiacomplexitypsila. By the analysis of PCA on 22 physical features extracted from body motion data, we found that the variation of the motions could be expressed by four indices; velocity, height of waist, openness of the body and the range of the height of waist. By using a multiple regression analysis, we discovered the relationship between the impressional features given by the motion and the physical motion features.