Considerations for believable emotional facial expression animation

Facial expressions can be used to communicate emotional states through the use of universal signifiers within key regions of the face. Psychology research has identified what these signifiers are and how different combinations and variations can be interpreted. Research into expressions has informed animation practice, but as yet very little is known about the movement within and between emotional expressions. A better understanding of sequence, timing, and duration could better inform the production of believable animation. This paper introduces the idea of expression choreography, and how tests of observer perception might enhance our understanding of moving emotional expressions

Drawing the Unspeakable Understanding ’the other’ through narrative empathy in animated documentary

How to represent the suffering of distant others? An international exchange program between Africa and Europe was set up in 2006 to tackle this issue with the help of documentary filmmaking. A result was A Kosovo Fairytale (2009), a  case study of how animated documentary can provide insights in how to represent "the other". Theories of narrative empathy informs the understanding of the process as well as the final film. This paper examines animated documentary from three distinct perspectives. As a pedagogical tool to enhance cultural understanding, as a process of narrative empathy and as a coherent text which makes use of narrative strategies endemic to animated documentary in order to create emotional engagement. Conclusions suggest that animated documentary can be a novel way of representing the other, especially if narrative empathy is present throughout a production process, and that the process involves participatory elements where the subjects contribute to the narrative. Key words: empathy, narrative, Africa, representation, animated documentary, refuge

Computer-supported laboratory for production-oriented electrotechnical systems

At the electrical engineering department of the K.U.Leuven an education research project was started in October 1997. The target is to develop a powerful environment to teach students to solve practice-oriented problems as they will encounter them in industry furtheron in their career. In order to give a wide use to the developed environment, a close collaboration has been established with three polytechnical engineering institutes. Self-dependence has to be stimulated by creating possibilities for real “hands-on experience”. Such an educational environment implicates time-problems, high investment costs and last but not least safety restrictions. The project contributes to the solution of these problems by using simulation- and softwareenvironments, without loosing the real hands-on feeling

Jan Švankmajer

JAN ŠVANKMAJER: THE PRODIGIOUS ANIMATOR FROM PRAGUE The Czech animated-film director, visual artist, and surrealist Jan Švankmajer is one of the most remarkable filmmakers of the last three decades. The influential French film journal Positif considers him, together with the famous Russian animator Yuri Norstein (Tale of Tales), "a giant of contemporary film."(1) The British film critic Julian Petley calls him, along with the Polish directors Jan Lenica and Walerian Borowczyk, "...one of the key animators to have emerged in Eastern Europe since the war."(2) Born in 1934, the sixty-years-old director embarked on his filmmaking career in 1964; since then, he has made more than twenty films, mostly shorts.(3) His works are regularly featured at major international competitions, including Annecy, Berlin, Cannes, Mannheim, Toronto, and Oberhausen.(4) For his films, Švankmajer has received over thirty festival prizes and honours. Unfortunately, Švankmajer's philosophically profound, visually rich and..

Genera Esfera: Interacting with a trackball mapped onto a sphere to explore generative visual worlds

Genera Esfera is an interactive installation that allows the audience to interact and easily become a VJ (visual DJ) in a world of generative visuals. It is an animated and generative graphic environment with a music playlist, a visual spherical world related with and suggested by the music, which reacts and evolves. The installation has been presented at MIRA Live Visual Arts Festival 2015, in Barcelona. Genera Esfera was envisioned, developed and programmed on the basis of two initial ideas: first, to generate our spherical planets we need to work with spherical geometry and program 3D graphics; second, the interaction should be easy to understand, proposing a direct mapping between the visuals and the interface. Our main goal is that participants can focus on exploring the graphic worlds rather than concentrate on understanding the interface. For that purpose we use a trackball to map its position onto sphere rotations. In this paper, we present the interactive installation Genera Esfera, the design guidelines, the mathematics behind the generative visuals and its results.Postprint (published version

Myth Understanding

Myth Understanding is a prototype of an interactive educational program geared towards elementary school children. It provides self-paced instruction, mixing animation, graphics, and sound with information pertaining to earth science. Mythological characters from ancient Greece are sources which provide the child with scientific as well as historic information. In effect, children learn about ancient Greek mythology as they discover the mysteries and makeup of the earth. Children are given the flexibility to decide on what information to view ac cording to their own personal preference. Meticulous attention was given to the artwork interface design and layout. Myth Understanding incorporates multimedia design to make Greek mythology and earth science come alive, exhibiting facts that are not only illustrative, but at the same time entertaining and informative. The evolution of Myth Understanding will be explored in the following chapters. Initial concepts, research, character development and tqaechnical considerations will be addressed. My main goal is to stimulate, educate, and entertain children about Greek mythology and earth science. Myth Under standing provides them with a passport to the time of myths and magic

Multiple-View Tracing for Haskell: a New Hat

Different tracing systems for Haskell give different views of a program at work. In practice, several views are complementary and can productively be used together. Until now each system has generated its own trace, containing only the information needed for its particular view. Here we present the design of a trace that can serve several views. The trace is generated and written to file as the computation proceeds. We have implemented both the generation of the trace and several different viewers

Can Computers Create Art?

This essay discusses whether computers, using Artificial Intelligence (AI), could create art. First, the history of technologies that automated aspects of art is surveyed, including photography and animation. In each case, there were initial fears and denial of the technology, followed by a blossoming of new creative and professional opportunities for artists. The current hype and reality of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools for art making is then discussed, together with predictions about how AI tools will be used. It is then speculated about whether it could ever happen that AI systems could be credited with authorship of artwork. It is theorized that art is something created by social agents, and so computers cannot be credited with authorship of art in our current understanding. A few ways that this could change are also hypothesized.Comment: to appear in Arts, special issue on Machine as Artist (21st Century