Abstract
“Shape” has been regarded as one of the fundamental elements of plastic art, together with “color” and “material”. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of “shape” on affective meanings, under the condition that the visual stimulus of a three-dimensional shape is given. The semantic differential technique is used for extraction of affective factors, with samples of stimulus produced by 3DCG technique. Since it is difficult to separate the stimulus of “shape” and that of “color” in the visual stimulus of a three-dimensional shape, both of the single-color experiment and the colored three-dimensional-shape experiment are done; the influence of “shape” is investigated by comparison between the respective results. 33 single colors and 132 colored three-dimensional shapes with simple geometrical form (cube, cylinder, cone and sphere) are used as samples.
As a result, four factors are extracted for single-color stimulus by factor analysis: “Showiness”, “Pleasantness”, “Strength” and “Warmth”. Moreover, the factor of “Looseness” is added to the above factors under the condition of three-dimensional-shape stimulus. The following tendencies of these factors are obtained; the factors of “Pleasantness” and “Warmth” show the remarkable variation caused by the influence of “shape” among the single-color factors, and factor scores of “Looseness” depend on straightness/roundness of shapes.
