A Novel Approach to Managing Lower Face Complexity in Signing Avatars

John McDonald, Ronan Johnson, Rosalee Wolfe


Abstract
An avatar that produces legible, easy-to-understand signing is one of the essential components to an effective automatic signed/spoken translation system. Facial nonmanual signals are essential to natural signing, but unfortunately signing avatars still do not produce acceptable facial expressions, particularly on the lower face. This paper reports on an innovative method to create more realistic lip postures. The approach manages the complexity of creating lip postures, thus making fewer demands on the artists making them. The method will be integral to our efforts to develop libraries containing lip postures to support the generation of facial expressions for several sign languages.
Anthology ID:
2022.sltat-1.10
Volume:
Proceedings of the 7th International Workshop on Sign Language Translation and Avatar Technology: The Junction of the Visual and the Textual: Challenges and Perspectives
Month:
June
Year:
2022
Address:
Marseille, France
Editors:
Eleni Efthimiou, Stavroula-Evita Fotinea, Thomas Hanke, John C. McDonald, Dimitar Shterionov, Rosalee Wolfe
Venue:
SLTAT
SIG:
Publisher:
European Language Resources Association
Note:
Pages:
67–72
Language:
URL:
https://aclanthology.org/2022.sltat-1.10
DOI:
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
John McDonald, Ronan Johnson, and Rosalee Wolfe. 2022. A Novel Approach to Managing Lower Face Complexity in Signing Avatars. In Proceedings of the 7th International Workshop on Sign Language Translation and Avatar Technology: The Junction of the Visual and the Textual: Challenges and Perspectives, pages 67–72, Marseille, France. European Language Resources Association.
Cite (Informal):
A Novel Approach to Managing Lower Face Complexity in Signing Avatars (McDonald et al., SLTAT 2022)
Copy Citation:
PDF:
https://aclanthology.org/2022.sltat-1.10.pdf