About

Dr Anamaria Ciucanu

I’m an animation techniques lecturer, researcher and storyteller, passionate about creating characters (theatre, animation, procedural, AI), understanding different forms of behaviour and how they create empathy in audiences. I’m currently the unit leader for 3D Character Development and Character Animation Techniques on the BSc Computer Animation and VFX course, at Manchester Metropolitan University. Before this role, I did an Engineering Doctorate (EngD) in Computer Animation at the University of Bath, UK, within the Centre for Digital Entertainment (CDE). I have a PGCert Learning And Teaching In Higher Education and am a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA).

My main R&D interests are in different forms of expressing character animation: procedural, behavioral (Laban motion analysis, emergence theory, AI etc) and physics based, movement and pattern analysis, mesh reconstruction and deformation, expressing emotions, humour and other human behaviours through abstract movement (automata) and mathematical functions.