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CharToon Faces

2010 Spring course at MOME

Lecturer:   Zsófia Ruttkay PhD, Senior research fellow, e-mail: ruttkayATmome.hu

Time:         Tuesday 13.40-15.00 and Friday 13.40-18.00 4 weeks
                  First occasion: 9 February 2010
                  Special occasion: 10 March 9 AM, in A 104: Talk by Tomoko Koda (Japan)

Location:    Room B101

Course home:   http://create.mome.hu/ruttkay/CharToon/

Description:

Fulfillment requirements:   

  • 2 heads (man-woman), for each happy/sad/neutral expressions.
  • for each case, a 4 seconds animation: 2 seconds onset, 2 seconds display.

Students:
      Olivér Horváth
      Dávid Lovas
      Torsten Posselt (ERASMUS student from UdK Berlin)

Resources:

Related links:

  • A new study suggests that people from different cultures might read facial expressions differently.
  • Ken Perlin's page, with a lot of fascinating content including facial animation
  • Steve di Paola's page with again a well of inspiration, also on evolutionary faces

Lectures

9.02:    Kick-off

Topics:
12.02:    Emotions and their display on faces

Topics:
  • introduction: goal of the course, assesment, way of working
  • we do the pre-test of the Japanese designs
  • emotions: some questions to ask
  • emotions: physiology, mental state, display
  • quick course about modelling facial expressions
  • CharToon demos,
Assignments:
  1. Do the Japanese research experiment, if you have not done it yet before. You may need to try at different times of the day to have fast contact.
  2. Skecth a few (at least 4) heads on paper, not too realistic but expressive, man/woman, and for each a happy and a sad version. Scan your designs digitally as images.
    Use file names as: yourname_headnumber_emotion where emotion is neutral, happy or sad
  3. Download and install the CharToon sw on your laptop/PC. I am not sure if it runs on MacOs - just give a try.
    You need Java installed to run it. Test if you can start the sw. If you have problems, send a mail.
  4. Download the into paper and the documentation.
  5. For next class bring along your laptop, or if you do not have one, the designs on a stick.
16.02:    Design of emotional faces

Topics:
  • happy and sad expressions according to Ekman - and here is a masked expression
  • other variants of expressions - we look at line drawings
  • evaluation your drawings
  • discussion of hands-on exercise with CharToon
  • discussion of design guidelines for next course
Assignments for Friday:
  1. at least 2 faces, man-woman, each with happy/sad/neutral expression should be scanned to 600x800 pixel image, ready to be viewed
  2. make a design description of the best 2 faces (man/woman) by layers, what will be moving of the features