Robin's blog

EMOTIONAL AVATARS BLOG

Welcome to the Emotional Avatars blog! This website will cover my thoughts and plans as I strive to complete my PhD project, which I will be working on between September 2007 and September 2010. The blog will serve as my Personal Development Plan (PDP), and will be submitted for review prior to my thesis submission.

I've chosen to leave this blog completely open to all readers, therefore exposing my personal thoughts, the outcome of team meetings, my concerns regarding the project, the development of research design and methodology, plus some limited findings to the world. I feel that this approach is appropriate for my PDP, as it will serve me much more effectively than a static, offline document - for instance, I'll be able to receive ongoing feedback from others on my work, skills, and development.

However, I will also be leaving certain things out of the blog. I won't, for instance, provide a summary of every team meeting - just those meetings that I feel are worth blogging about and which are not overly personal.

 

Throughout my blog, there will be certain entry types that come under specific headings. These are:

 

Team Meeting:

Entries on recent meetings with the supervisory team. As stated, only a small percentage of meetings will be blogged, and this will not include minutes - only a summary of the discussion and my feelings on the project.

 

Experiment:

Entries related to experiments that I am planning, carrying out, or evaluating. Not all experiments will be recorded. For instance, pilot tests may be omitted.

 

Study:

Entries related to studies (artistic or qualitative) that I am planning, carrying out, or evaluating. As with experiments, not all studies will be recorded.

 

Personal Development:

Entries related to the development of skills or knowledge through either structured training or self-guided learning (for instance developing skills on statistical methods by reading specific books and practice using SPSS).

 

Product Development:

Entries related to the development of products, either related to the project or associated with side-projects. Products can include outputs such as art assets, animation, and interactive installations.

 

Presentation:

Entries related to presentations I have given - both at Abertay and elsewhere - to academics, professionals, and the public. I will cover most of the major presentations, but due to the nature of my day to day life at Abertay I will no doubt omit a lot of the smaller presentations to Abertay visitors. For instance, most of the smaller or impromptu research presentations given in the HIVE (probably on average one every 2 weeks) will probably be left out.

 

Press:

Entries related to press articles or appearances on my work at Abertay.

 

Paper Submission and Acceptance:

Entries related to papers I have written, am writing, have submitted, or which have been accepted. I will include entires on all paper submissions and acceptances.

 

Of Interest:

Miscellaneous entries which relate to films I've seen, books I've read, news stories I've picked up on, or meetings I've had that have impacted on my thinking about the Emotional Avatars project.

 

EMOTIONAL AVATARS: choreographing emotional facial expression animation

The Emotional Avatars project is based in White Space at the University of Abertay Dundee, Scotland. The project got started in September 2007, and I will be involved in the project through to the completion of my Ph.D in August  2010 (but hopefully beyond!).

 

Project Overview:

Traditional animators will imbue a character with life by applying a range of methodologies, reference material codes and conventions. This process is iterative and can be highly intuitive with the animator making a range of value judgements and generally results in a nuanced and emotionally engaging performance. Procedurally generated character animations by comparison can result in performances of limited emotional range.  

This project seeks to develop emotionally engaging procedural character animations. The research will be underpinned by a comparative study of psychologically derived data relating to the expression and interpretation of emotion, with film based acted and animated performances.

The project will be practice led, examining creative methodologies used by traditional animators coupled with methods of evaluation derived from the field of psychology

 

In essence, we aim to develop a better understanding of procedural animation, specifically looking at how the animation of an interactive virtual character can envoke an emotional and empathetic response in the spectator. Over the course of the next three years, we will attempt to establish a grammar to support the empathetic exchange between avatars/agents and viewers. By studying both animation techniques from the perspective of the artist and human interaction from the perspective of psychology, we hope to establish a framework which will enable animators to create nuanced, emotionally engaging interactive character performances for use in, for example, computer games. 

With a background in computer and traditional arts, I will be approaching the research topic from the perspective of an artist/animator. As a result, the Ph.D itself will be practice-led, although the interdisciplinary nature of the project will require input from computer and social science, in particular in regards to the development of animation, technology, methods and methodology.

I am always on the lookout for researchers who also have an interest in the development of animation for interactive characters. Please feel free to get in touch if you are working on a similar project or if you see connections between this project and your own research or work. 

 

Robin Sloan,

October 15th 2007

PUBLICATIONS

Peer Reviewed Journal Papers

Sloan, R.J.S., Robinson, B., Scott-Brown, K., Moore, F. and Cook, M. 2010. Choreographing emotional facial expressions. Journal of Computer Animation and Virtual Worlds. (Accepted February 2010).

 

Peer Reviewed Conference Papers

Sloan, R.J.S. 2010. Contextualising dynamic emotional facial expression animation. Animation Evolution: The 22nd Annual Society for Animation Studies Conference. Edinburgh, UK July 9-11 2010 (Accepted February 2010).

Sloan, R.J.S., Robinson, B., Scott-Brown, K., Moore, F. and Cook, M. 2010. Choreographing emotional facial expressions. Twenty Third Annual Conference on Computer Animation and Social Agents. Saint-Malo, France May 31-June 2 2010. (Accepted February 2010).

Sloan, R.J.S., Robinson, B., Scott-Brown, K., Moore, F. and Cook, M. 2010. Observer perception of artistically manipulated emotional facial expression animations. Eleventh International Conference on Computer Graphics and Imaging. Innsbruck, Austria February 17-19 2010.

Sloan, R.J.S., Robinson, B. and Cook, M. 2009. Investigating facial animation production through artistic inquiry. First International Conference on Creative Content Technologies. Athens, Greece 15-20 November 2009. 

Sloan, R.J.S., Cook, M. and Robinson, B. 2009. Considerations for believable emotional facial expression animation. In 2009 2nd International Conference on Visualization. Barcelona, Spain 14-17 July 2009. IEEE Computer Society: Los Alamitos, CA

Sloan, R.J.S., Robinson, B., Cook, M. and Bown, J. 2008. Dynamic emotional expression choreography: perception of naturalistic facial expressions. In Inaugrual SAND Academic Peer Reviewed Papers. Swansea, UK 24 November 2008. Swansea Metropolitan University: Swansea, UK.

Sloan, R. 2005. Improving the narrative appeal of story-driven videogames. In J. Terkeurst and I. Paterson [editors] Women in Games Conference Proceedings 2005. Dundee, UK 8-10 August 2005. University of Abertay Dundee: Dundee, UK.

 

Peer Reviewed Poster Presentations

Sloan, R.J.S., Robinson, B. and Cook, M. 2009. Creative approaches to emotional expression animation. [Poster]. In A. Nijholt, A. Egges, H. van Welbergen and H. Hondorp, editors, Short Paper and Poster Proceedings of the 22nd Annual Conference on Computer Animation and Social Agents. Amsterdam, Netherlands, 17-19 June 2009. University of Twente: Enschede, the Netherlands.

Sloan, R.J.S., Robinson, B. and Cook, M. 2009. Animating believable facial expressions: is it possible to choreograph perceptually valid emotional expressions?. [Poster]. BMVA Technical Meeting on Facial Analysis and Animation. Edinburgh, UK, 10 June 2009.

 

Other Publications and Non-Published Papers

Sloan, R.J.S., Robinson, B. and Cook, M. 2009. A practice-led methodology for researching the creative production of emotional facial expression animation. SAND Conference 2009. Swansea, UK 23-27 November 2009. (Submitted for publication June 2009 - research papers session cancelled October 2009).

Sloan, R.J.S. 2009. Emotional avatars: investigating facial animation production through practice-led research. University of Abertay Dundee Research Students Conference. Dundee, UK 30 September-1 October 2009.

Personal Development: ACSSP summer school

Having won a SICSA scholarship earlier in the year, I'm off to the ACSSP summer school in Edinburgh for three days. Santiago and Chris will also be heading through, which is good for our agents/HCI theme within WhSpR. Furthermore, it looks as though the Emotional Avaatrs head will feature on all three of our poster presentations, since we've linked up our projects around facial animation!

When I come back I'll officially be in write up mdoe, so this seems to be an ideal event to end my PhD with. A few of the tutors at the summer school are researchers I have followed since 2007, so I'm really looking forward to meet with them and hear about their work. Hopefully this will event will cater for a smooth transition between my doctoral studies and my post-doctoral research career!

Fingers crossed anyway!

Team Meeting: Write up progress

Had a recent meeting with my supervisors to discuss the current progress of my writing up. Seems to be ok - that's a complete draft of my methodology chapter done, although it's a behemoth at 12,000 words. That may get shuffled around and exported to other chapters! All seems to be going well, but with my wedding coming up I may have less time to focus on this at the moment. Aiming to have my chapters 1-4 first drafts done before I leave on my honey moon, which would give me 2 chapters to write and 1 to do a 2nd draft of in later September.

Press: News coverage of Emotional Avatars

There has been further press coverage of the project since yesterday's press release, which was primarily picked up by gaming websites. Items have been published in the Press and Journal and the Courier, both of which have somehow been accompanied by unfortunate photograph of moi taken during the first project exposition in 2008. This evening, there was a short item broadcast on the STV News at Six. I tried my best to cram a complex idea into something that could not only be said in 30 seconds, but would also (hopefully!) make sense to a general audience.

Link to STV news video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mXiiABqSyk

 

Courier Coverage

http://www.thecourier.co.uk/Living/Digital/article/3195/animated-over-abertay-study-s-potential.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

 

The Press and Journal

http://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/Article.aspx/1847017?UserKey=

Press: Publicity of recent research

Publication of Emotional Avatars research in the Journal of Computer Animation and Virtual Worlds has been followed up with some press coverage of the project. As well as being interviewed for Radio Tay, an Abertay press release has been picked up by a few notable gaming websites, including Gamasutra and MCV. A story is also to be published in tomorrow's Press and Journal newspaper. See the links below for more information.

 

Original Abertay press release

http://www.abertay.ac.uk/about/news/newsarchive/2010/name,6296,en.html

 

Gamasutra coverage

http://gamasutra.com/view/pressreleases/61317/Facing_the_future_of_animation_at_Abertay.php

 

MCV coverage

http://www.mcvuk.com/press-releases/61317/Facial-animation-research

 

Develop coverage

http://www.develop-online.net/press-releases/61317/Facial-animation-research

 

Student Times coverage:

http://www.studenttimes.org/st_culture/game_article.php?article_id=1188

Presentation: Visitors to Abertay

Was involved in a short HIVE show and tell today, to visitors on a tour run by Dr. Natanson. As usual I talked about the Emotional Avatars research to date, and demonstrated how interdisciplinary thinking underpinned my development of methodology.

Personal Development: Completion of PGCert

This week, I have completed and submitted my final assignments for the PGCert in Higher Education Teaching. Unfortunately due to there being lots of other things on my plate lately - most of all planning my wedding! - I was unable to complete the final module in time to be assessed before the summer graduation. However, I'm glad that I met my target in completing all the given assignments before the start of the 2010/11 academic year. Hopefully my final essay will pass, and perhaps I'll be able to officially attain the qualification before the winter graduation! (providing that this is possible!)

Personal Development: The value of PhD research event

In August I'll be travelling to Berkshire in order to meet other PhD researchers and present my work. The Value of PhD Research event will be held at the Cumberland Lodge near Windsor, and there will be around 60-70 PhD researchers from all over the UK present. This looks like it could be a great chance to meet other PhD's from outside Scotland, and also a good chance to learn more about the possibilities of life as a post-doc!

http://www.cumberlandlodge.ac.uk/our_conferences/forthcoming_conference_pages/PhD+Conference+2010