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:

• Quick overview about the Face Editor and the Animation Edior
• sw: CharToon2.1.rar
• basic overview paper
• basic documentation: basic documentation: CharToon Manual NS-R0004.pdf
• further documentation: further documentation: CharToon2.1 Extensions Manual NS-R0004.pdf
• The original CharToon project web page - helaas with some removed links/content

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:

• into about Intelligent Virtual Agents and possible applications
• research context: intelligent virtual agents (IVA),see examples at the GALA site
• cooperation with Prof. Tomoko Koda at Department of Information Science and Technology Osaka Institute of Technology

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