Institute of Art Design + Technology Dún Laoghaire
Ireland’s campus for the Creative Industries

Georgia Giffin 

 
BA [Hons] Animation

Hello!! I am a Dublin-based animator and illustrator with a deep love for expressive and colourful characters! I am passionate about communicating personality and emotion through my work and designs.

.REBOOT

A short film featuring a collection of robotic characters exploring their post-apocalyptic world. This film is made using digital 2D limited animation and follows Lewisia waking up for the first time in this quiet world where nature has overtaken a once-bustling city. We also meet a solar-powered gardening robot with malfunctioning, and a camera-bot who is too wobbly to take pictures. I wanted to make this film as an exercise in communicating character through strong design work and acting. There is no dialogue so the robots can only show their thoughts and feelings through their actions, which I found was a unique challenge as a director and animator!



Electronic Empathy: How We Connect with Robots in Media

My thesis explores how robots as portrayed in film and visual media are represented under a broad set of definitions, the ways in which we as audience members can relate to and empathise with these characters who are commonly defined as ‘inhuman’’ gives insight into a human’s ability to empathise on a cognitive level. On top of this, robots’ presentations range from human-adjacent to completely machine-like, eliciting different responses. Anthropomorphism, the Uncanny Valley, and Narrative Empathy all affect us subconsciously, it can be argued that the more ‘nonhuman’ robot characters are, the more effective they can be at achieving connection (given there is enough characterising behaviour present) especially when it comes to animated robots like Wall-E. Robots in Science-Fiction influence the real-world field of robotics, which in turn influences further fiction. Understanding people’s unique relationship with this type of character gives insight to the powerful cultural impact they consistently have both today and throughout film history.