(Untitled)

[smccloud]

[Cross-posted with the new site blog until I have a proper rss feed bloggy thing]

Making Faces

The Grimace Project is a freakishly cool facial expression generator that came out a few weeks ago in which you can mix and match any two of the six "emotional primaries" that I charted in Chapter 2 of Making Comics.

Comments

[ciaranbenson]

BRILLIANT!

... And creepy ...

I think this is what they talk about when they say that robots have to be just like humans or not like humans at all, or the subtle differences in their facial clues will weird people out - some of the faces this thing can make are almost TOO good.

[smccloud]

Ah, yes. The Uncanny Valley strikes again. ^^

[tgeller]

Ah, that sounds familiar. ;)

[smccloud]

Oh, right! Your topic, Sir.

[tgeller]

Psst... hidden version downloadable here (since the link you gave requires a login). :)

[abersager]

That's a really interesting paper! I was looking for an up-to-date analysis of the topic and will definitely cite it in the paper about our project.

[tgeller]

Terrific! Feel free to call or write me if you would like to be put in contact with any of the interview subjects.

[abersager]

When designing the face, we were consciously trying to avoid the Uncanny Valley. Any other tool we could find is based on a detailed 3D mesh model. By sticking to Scott's comic depictions, we hoped to stay out of the abyss. Failure? Success?

[smccloud]

Oh it definitely steers clear for the most part. The creepy part is at least in part because of the very FACT of it. ^__^