Blurring the Line

Project LifeLike is an attempt to create realistic and emotive avatars for computer systems. While computer graphics generate good looking characters, the ability of an avatar to express genuine emotion remains difficult. This is a compilation of blended images showing our project’s attempt to recreate some of the six basic human emotions visible on the face (anger, fear, happiness, sadness, surprise, and disgust). Each was met with varying success but it is becoming clear that though incredibly difficult, expressing emotion is critical to engaging avatar systems. Photos were taken of the real human and the avatar was meticulously manipulated in an attempt to recreate crucial facial elements. While the project currently has a much more realistic looking avatar, this version was useful because the discrete facial characteristics are readily visible making the experiment that was run easier to control.