Indices of Visual Characterization in Television Animations from Children’s Perspective

Animation is one of the most important forms of TV program production in Iran. Various traditional groups, specially children and adolescents, watch programs on various channels such as Pooya and Omid and are looking for their tastes. In the fierce competition between IRIB channels, and foreign channels and other different media, those animations succeed that know their audience better and base their conceptual productions on their opinions. This study was conducted to assess the attitudes of Iranian children about the visual appearance of characters in television animation. Accordingly, the author conducted this research by referring to responses to questionnaires distributed among children all over Iran. The statistical population of the study included boys and girls aged six to 11 years (first and second grade in elementary school). The questionnaires were also focused on measuring the interest rate of the children in items such as color, clothing, hair, eyes and the like. Children with socio-cultural differences from five regions of the country (cities of Sari, Mashhad, Zahedan, Bandar-e Abbas, Yazd, Sanandaj and Tabriz) were selected by multi-stage random sampling and by collecting the in-person questionnaires and descriptive analysis of the data, the research ended with 1393 boys and girls. Most Iranian children were interested in warm colors, local and traditional atmosphere, curved lines, polished shapes, medium limbs, tall height, discontinuous eyebrows, light hair, and bright eyes. These features can be considered by animation artists to create television programs to produce attractive works based on the audience’s taste.