The techniques for creating realistic animnated characters have come a long ways since Gertie the dinosaur first stepped onto the screen. Between the science of motion capture and the art of animation we can now create a realistic array of human actions. Still lacking, however, is the most expressive body part: the face. Human faces are tremendously complex and our brains have evolved equally complex mechanisms to interpret them. They are truly ``the seat of the soul''. The two main animation techniques, manual and motion capture, also apply to faces. For the technical portion of my CS838 project I chose to use facial motion capture to drive a speaking character in our animation.
I was put into contact with Dr. Jordan Green, a researcher here at UW who uses an optical motion capture system[Vicon] to study speech development. Our plan was to use his system to capture facial expressions, lip syncing and speech for our characters.