Finding “Appeal” Factors in Local Animation Character Design: Formalistic and Visual Semiotic Analysis (FVSA)

This research aims to understand the ‘appeal’ factor in local animated character design. ‘Appeal’ is one of the 12 principles of animation design and is often considered ambiguous. To achieve ‘appeal,’ one of the methods used is Viewer’s Impression Words (VIW), which is a modification of Kansei Words (KW). This method combines formalistic theory and visual semiotic to achieve Viewer’s Impression Words (VIW), an essential part of Kansei Engineering. The results of this experiment, it can be concluded that this method is able to help the participants choose the appropriate VIW word and towards the next activity that is the process of loose principles. This method is suggested as a new technique to improve the process in obtaining VIW or Kansei Words to use in the measurement exercises to find the affect (emotion) in understanding ‘appeal.’ This is to achieve loose principles in local animated character design.


INTRODUCTION
The 'Kansei Engineering' method is referred to to achieve new loose principles in designing interesting local animated characters. Before this study began with a formalistic and visual semiotic approach,  (Soikun & Ibrahim, 2018).
In the field of UX / UI, the practice of combining both qualitative and quantitative methods is done to investigate human reactions, and quantitative data calculation is commonly used (Mozyrko, 2020)  Peaceful and a very balanced ecosystem.The peaceful area normally resents a more tense future as in the "calm before the storm." Drawing, color, hue, and hapes suggest a mysterious yet tempting to know further about the drawing and the story. understanding using the semiotic-related method.
Another study by Tinarbuko (2017)  The article by Ashwin (1984) provided ground research and theory in analyzing drawings in the design field using a framework called semiotics (the science of signs) and has been further enhanced by a few different scholars.
Drawing has always been associated with signs and has essential cultural origins that are or drawing function to convey a message and communication. As such, this process involves two participants and can be called an emitter and the receiver. In this study, the animator who drew the animation drawing was the emitter, and the viewers were the receiver.
The substance or messages is embedded in the drawing and exist in the set of codes.
The drawings can be encoded by the emitter and decoded or interpreted by the receiver.
The concept of trichotomy, the icon, indexes, and symbols, if applied to draw, the concept of iconicity is immediately obvious (Ashwin, 1984). When it comes to animation, particularly Japanese animation or 'Anime' that is being investigated in this study, too many people, it is just animation aiming at entertaining and nothing more. However, too many more, it is much more at being only entertainment.
There is much reason for such presumption, "We intend to provide inventories of the major compositional structures which have become established as conventions in the course of the history of Visual Semiotics, and to analyze how they are used to produce meaning by contemporary image-makers." Moreover, they further add that "because meaning is not given, but constructed." given the explanation, it is possible to compose meaning from drawing through the visual semiotics analysis and process.
The effectiveness of Visual Semiotics had been supported, and it is by far less arbitrary.
Visual semiotics hold their meaning compared to written and spoken language. As pointed out by Saussure, the concept in semiotics, Signifier, and Signified, the Signifier as sound, image, or word and the Signified, which is the 'meaning' raises the question of arbitrary when the relation between the two becomes random, where its meaning can become different from anything and anyone (Berger, 1990).  Kansei keywords are adjectives, nouns, or verbs, and sometimes a sentence (Nagamachi, 1999 Notice where the first sight is and why we are attracted to the picture and identify colors, textures, and shapes of images.

METHOD
The artist's composition is to guide the vision to a particular part of the picture is just as important to note. All elements and principles, as well as composition, also need to be explained when using formalistic analysis.
(Tate, n.d.). Figure 1 shows the relationship between the theories and the survey form.

FVSA and Viewer's Impression Words (VIW)
Kansei Keywords (Kansei Words) or (Viewer's Impression Words) VIW are collected after Kansei Engineers understand the planned strategy, and keyword collection (KW) is related to the product domain, i.e., The use and approach of this theory are also used to achieve emotional words or in this writing; it is transformed into 'Viewer's Impression Words (VIW).' The combination of art theory and design is also capable of providing additional assistance in finding the right emotional words to be used in the design of a questionnaire commonly used in Kansei Engineering methods.