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• 1 media/Game Start.jpg 2017-11-28T07:30:54-08:00 Animation within The Evil Within 23 plain 2017-12-13T20:12:05-08:00 Within the survival horror genre many game studios put a heavy emphasis on making sure that not only are the characters movements fluid but incredibly realistic. Many developers use motion capture animation to literally take the movement and stunts of actors and rendering them to the games character. This is done by having the character actor wear a suit typically covered in markers at each point of importance on the actors body. Specialized cameras will capture the movement of the markers and apply it to a digital skeleton which is then used as the framework for the characters animation. The other technique used for animation within gaming is called “keyframing” where the animators draw by hand the movements of the character in between crucial poses. This style takes much more time but allows the animators to tweak the animation adding in their own artistic conventions. Within the survival horror genre most games prefer the keyframing method simply due to how many games within this genre aren’t always based in reality. An additional perk to keyframe animation is that it emphasizes the uncanny factor within the relationship the player has to the avatar. The uncanniness is empowered due to the nature of the relationship, for uncanny is experienced when in this case the avatar, being an inanimate being becomes too resemblant of us through being animated. The fact that the avatar itself without animation from the player, returns to a static like posture and state only makes the hyper realistic movement more uncanny when the player begins playing. Ewan Kirkland addresses this in his work “Horror Videogames and the Uncanny” when he states, “In this respect the avatar has increasingly assumes qualities of the uncanny in its close visual, auditory and preambulatory approximation to the human form – the sense of disquiet which Freud observes is produced when ‘an inanimate object becomes too much like an animate one.” When the avatar transgresses its own boundary of being inanimate to enter a state mirroring human appearance and behavior the uncanniness is overwhelming.
  
  For the Evil Within we see this overwhelming uncanniness occur in the avatars hyper realistic human like movements and behavior. The most common occurrences of this is any death scene within the game. Clearly it is bad for the avatar to die within any survival horror game, yet most games put incredible detail into making the death scenes spine tingling. The Evil Within is no exception. The specificity in the animation of every death scene is unbelievable because no two death scenes are similar. Every animation of the avatar’s body collapsing to the ground lifeless is different and the accuracy of the realistic body motions are quite uncanny. At the University of Bolton three writers by the names of Angelina Tinwell, Mark Grimshaw, and Andrew Williams wrote a work called “Uncanny behaviour in survival horror games” in which they explore the modalities of gaming to examine the uncanniness. In their work they stated, “a high level of graphical realism in a character's appearance raises high expectations for a character's motion and behaviour. If the quality of motion and behaviour does not match up with the character’s realistic, human-like appearance, it can increase the perception that the character is not real, thus evoking a sense of the uncanny,” which is true for the relationship between hyper realistic graphics and avatar animation within the Evil Within. If the avatar did not behave or act to the same quality of standard perceived by the player then the uncanniness would occur from the dissociation between what is not human like and what is. The Evil Within though not only captures this same quality standard, but surpasses it managing to create a behavior for an avatar that transgresses its nature into acting in a humanistic manner. In addition to being stomach churning the flailing, writhing in agony, and limpness of the avatars lifeless body in the circumstances of the horrific deaths is similar to the behaviors of an actual human in the case of one of these events further weakening the dichotomy between avatar and human.
  
  The last relationship influenced by animation is the relationship the player has to the avatar. This point may seem more connected to the concept of gaming as a whole yet through an avatars animation the player is given free reign of the avatars autonomy. Without the player the avatar would not have any facet of autonomy due to it being incapable of self control, yet when in the hands of the player the avatar becomes somewhat of an extension or representation of the player within the games world. Harroway thought that virtual realities functioned as an extension to ourselves and that engagement with these virtual realities/environments redefined our perceptions of our identities. With this each experience resulting from playing a survival horror game occured through choices the player made as if they existed in the given scenario. For the players to undergo this unnoticed psychological torture and it be received as pleasurable is uncanny itself. Kirkland also addresses this self extension by saying “The avatar has come to represent the ‘I’ on the screen. Players variously control, protect and manipulate the avatar. It represents the means by which the game space is engaged with, and constitutes the player’s sense of embodiment within the virtual space.” If each interaction between the avatar and the environment is meant to be an extension between an interaction between the player and the environment through the game itself, then the uncanniness has another mode of reinforcement on top of animation. The additional mode of reinforcement being the player subconsciously treats the avatar as their own virtual embodiment, thus depending upon the players engagement may treat the threats within the game as threats to their own embodiment conflating the game to a perceived reality they’re involved in. When the players make this conflation the uncanniness caused from the avatar transgressing its natural state is caused by the player giving the avatar human qualities due to believing the avatar is them self.