I gave a guest lecture for a class yesterday, during which I demonstrated interactions with some of my procedurally animated characters. Later in the day I received an email from a student saying that he had spent the next several hours pondering something I had said during that demo:
“It’s not enough that we are interested in them, they have to be interested in us.”
I think this is, in fact, the core essence of interactive animated characters. We are fascinated by them because they seem to be aware of us, and to respond back to us — they seem to recognize us.
In a way, we see such characters as a kind of mirror, and we experience a sort of blurring of identity. In some profound way, they become us, and we become them.
Newly emerging VR and AR technologies are allowing such characters to break free of the screen, and to inhabit the world around us. When they do, this feeling of shared identity will become even more powerful and profound.