Research on the Emotions Expressed by the Posture of Kemo-mimi

Abstract

Kemo-mimi means the dog- or cat-like ears on a humanoid character, or the ears of the animal itself. Kemo-mimi is often used as an element of the avatar’s appearance. It is generally considered that the posture of animal ears represents the animal’s emotional state. And the idea has been used as a technique for expressing emotions in many cartoon and animation works. But despite this fact, there are few examples of studies on the emotions that can be expressed by animal ears. Therefore, we decided to investigate the relationship between the posture of the animal ears and emotions and to establish a method of expressing emotions using the ears. In the experiments, three-dimensional animations of animal ears changing posture were presented to the subjects, and they were asked to answer the emotion corresponding to the posture. The results showed that there was a certain degree of a common understanding of people’s impressions concerning the animal ears. In this paper, we report the emotions that can be expressed by the posture of the animal ears as revealed in this study.