1. Visual Simplified
Characters’ Emotion
Emulator Implementing OCC
Model Ana Lilia Laureano-Cruces1,2,3
Laura Hernández-Domínguez2
Martha Mora-Torres2
Juan Manuel Torres Moreno3
Jaime Cabrera-López2
• Departamento de Sistemas, Universidad
Autónoma Metropolitana -Azcapotzalco
• Posgrado en Ciencia e Ingeniería de la
Computación, UNAM, México
• Université d'Avignon et des Pays de
Vaucluse, France

2. Visual Simplified Characters’ Emotion
Emulator (EVE)
•This system was designed so that the user
can create emotional and affective
environments in real time, particulary in
stories.
•With EVE, the user can design:
•The characters that take part in the story
•The agents' interpersonal affective relationships
•The agents' possible actions
•The possible events that may occur during the story
•The objects (goals, desires, attractive or repulsive
manifestations)

3. Design of Agents I
•Agents are restricted to human
characters.
•The system can hold 2, 3 or 4 different
characters.
•Users can characterize the agents (change
their hairstyle, haircolor, eyewear and
name) in order to better represent the
character.

4. Design of Agents II

5. Design of Agents III
•Users can also define the affective
relationships between the agents.
•Range of values corresponding to affection:
o From -5 (total hatred)
o Passing through 0 (indifference)
o Up to +5 (unconditional love/friendship)

6. Design of Agents IV

7. Design of Events I
•EVE sees events as things that happen in the
course of a story, but are not direct
consequences of the agents’ actions. EVE
allows the user to set a name for each
event.
•Range of values corresponding to the level of
desirability of the events:
o From -5 (very undesirable)
o Passing through 0 (indifference)
o Up to +5 (very desirable)

8. Design of Events II
•NOTE: for EVE, the level of desirability of
an event is the same for everyone.

9. Design of Objects
•Objects are elements of the world that may
be material (money, a house) or immaterial
(goals, desires, abstractions). They are
named and given a level of appeal or appeal
by users.
•Range of values corresponding to the level of
desirability of the objects:
o From -5 (a very repulsive object)
o Passing through 0 (indifference)
o Up to +5 (a fascinating object)

10. Design of Actions I
•Actions are defined as acts that are available
for any of the agents to perform. They are
named and given a level of plausibility by
users.
•Range of values corresponding to the level of
plausibility of the actions:
o From -5 (a highly censurable action)
o Passing through 0 (indifference)
o Up to +5 (a praiseworthy action)

11. The Emotional Map I
•Having designed the agents, events,
objects and actions, EVE shows a general
map of the actual emotions of each of
the characters that have been designed,
the relationships between the characters,
and the chances for realization of events,
objects, and actions. This is the
environment in which the story will take
place.

12. The Emotional Map II
Emotional status
indicator for each
character towards
this particular
character List of possible
events that may
occur during the
story
Character
selectors
Displays a list of
possible objects
to be gained or
actions to be done
by the characters.
Emotional links
between characters

13. Emotions Considered by EVE I
•Humans are able to feel a very wide
variety of emotions. EVE restricts every
character to feel only happiness, anger,
and pride.
•Since a negative value on happiness is
consider as sadness and, as well, a
nagative value on pride may be consider
as shame, EVE is cpable of managing five
different kinds of emotions.

14. Emotions Considered by EVE II
•An emotion felt previously can alter the
intensity with which a given character
experiences a new emotion, thereby
presenting conflicting feelings.
•If a character feels a certain emotion at a
moment, this emotion does not disapear
or vary unless an event, action or object
takes place and alters the previous
emotion.

15. Emotions Considered by EVE III
•To make it clearer: imagine there is a
character whose beloved one has recently
died; this character will be really
devastated. Now, imagine this character
receives a priceless gift, this character's
happiness for receiving the gift will be
limited by the sadness of having lost a
beloved one. In other words, the
character won't be 100% happy.

16. Happiness
•Happiness in facts represents two
emotions: happiness and sadness. The
range considered for this emotion is from
-5 (distress), passing through 0 (neutrality)
to +5 (euphoria). These are the faces
depicting each of the emotions on this
ranking:

17. Anger
•Anger is an emotion with a range of values
varying from 0 (calm) to 5 (rage). There
are no negative values for this emotion.
•Here can be seen the graphic
representation for the different levels of
anger:

18. Pride
•Pride represents two emotions: pride and
shame. The range considered for this
emotion is from -5 (shame), passing
through 0 (neutrality) to +5 (pride). These
are the faces depicting each of the values
of pride:

19. Affective Relationships
•The possible levels of affective links that
may exist between the characters in a story
vary from -5 (hatred), passing through 0
(indifference) to +5 (unconditional
love/friendship). Affective relationships
among characters also have a visual
representation:

20. •We show a series of possible scenarios
which allow us to visualize some of the
emotional reactions of the characters in
the story of Othello in response to certain
events.
Possible Scenarios
NOTE: These scenarios were designed only to
exemplify; any story can be designed differently
based on the user’s interpretation.

21. Visual design for each character in Othello.

22. Affective Relationships Between
Characters in Othello
•

23. Emotions Triggered by Events I
•Suppose that at the beggining of the
story (every character's emotional
situation is neutral -value 0-) Desdemona
suffers a misfortune (an event with as
desirability value of -5), such as her
father gets angry with her and opposes
her marrying Othello.

24. Emotions Triggered by Events II
•Predictably,
Desdemona feels
very sad for her
own
missfortune.

25. Emotions Triggered by Events II
•Othello, who is
deeply in love
with
Desdemona,
feels very sad
for her fate.

26. Emotions Triggered by Events II
•Iago dislikes
Desdemona, so
he feels happy
for her
misfortune.

27. Emotions Triggered by Events II
•Rodrigo, who as
Othello is in love
with
Desdemona,
feels deeply sad
for her.

28. Emotions Triggered by Objects I
•Imagine now a scenario in which an
object of desire is in play, as it occurs in
the emotional map obtained when
Rodrigo receives the rank of lieutenant.

29. Emotions Triggered by Objects II
•Rodrigo feels
very proud and
his happiness
increases too for
having gotten
the new rank of
lieutenant.

30. Emotions Triggered by Objects II
•Othello, who
appreciates
Rodrigo, feels a
bit happy and
proud for him.

31. Emotions Triggered by Objects II
•Desdemona, who
loves Rodrigo
feels really
happy and proud
for him.

32. Emotions Triggered by Objects II
•Iago, who hates
Rodrigo feels
deeply sad and
angry for his
fortune, and for
not having been
able to get the
new rank
himself.

33. Emotions Triggered by the
Characters’ Actions I
•Actions involve two characters:
1.The character performing the action.
2.The character affected by that action.
•To ilustrate this, imagine that Iago
performs a highly censurable action
toward Othello: betrayal.

34. Emotions Triggered by the
Characters’ Actions I
•Othello feels sad for Iago's betrayal, but
he also feels angry at him and feels
shame for his friend's censurable action.

35. Emotions Triggered by the
Characters’ Actions I
•Desdemona feels deeply sad for
Othello's suffering, but also very angry
at Iago for his action towards her
beloved one.

36. Emotions Triggered by the
Characters’ Actions I
•Rodrigo feels sad for Othello's suffering,
but he also gets angry at Iago for his
censurable action towards his friend.

37. Emotions Triggered by the
Characters’ Actions I
•Since Iago hates Othello, he feels very
happy for Othello's distress.

38. The Logic of the System I
•The interpretation of the resulting
emotion in response to an event,
object, or action is based on matrices
of quantitative reactions with
interpretative values.
•The matrices have been filled in by the
development team based on their
personal experiences.

39. The Logic of the System II
•Eight matrices of quantitative reactions were
generated:
•1 to account for characters’ feelings toward events
(happiness)
•3 for reactions to objects (shame-pride, sadness-
happiness, and anger)
•1 matrix for happiness in the person affected by actions
•3 for emotional reactions toward the perpetrator of an
action (shame-pride, anger, and sadness-happiness).

40. The Logic of the System III
•Rows represent the emotional level of
the character reacting to the
character, to whom the event occurs.
•Columns represent the desirability of
the event.

41. Example: matrix of characters’
quantitative reactions to events

42. •Thus, the quadrant of the matrix shaded
light gray represents the section of ill will,
where a misfortune produces the maximum
increase in happiness for the person who
loathes the person affected by that event.
• In contrast, the quadrant shaded dark gray
represents feelings of good will, meaning
that a character is cheered by another
character’s good fortune

43. Conclusions
•This paper lays the foundation for analysis of characters’ emotional reactions in stories, and may
also help to improve interpretations of users’ emotional states or in developing interfaces in which
stories take place, such as automatic generation of stories and development of videogames.
•The OCC cognitive theory of emotions, is a methodology used to evaluate the possible emotion from
the cognitive point of view. Because this methodology is clear, precise and free of context has been
used frequently in the synthesis of emotions by computer
•This paper is a simplification of the OCC Model, but can be enriched with aspects that allow for
modification of characters’ initial emotional states, through interpersonal relationships, in order to
consider in stories variants of intensity of feelings that often change over the course of a story.

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