Conf: GALA event at IVA

[Thierry Hamon]

Date: Tue, 27 Apr 2010 10:13:45 +0100
From: Phil Heslop <philip.heslop at newcastle.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <9269FBA830A4F6409057BEBFC1280B5B8105FF3E5C at EXSAN01.campus.ncl.ac.uk>
X-url: http://iva2010.org/gala


NOTE: Change of submission email address (gala2010 at ncl.ac.uk)
	Extension of Deadlines: 14th May 2010 - GALA short paper, 1st
	June 2010 - GALA flash video submission 	

GALA (Gathering of Animated Lifelike Agents)
at IVA 2010, September 20-22, 2010, Philadelphia
http://iva2010.org/gala
Call for Participation

--

GALA IN A NUTSHELL:
-------------------

GALA is an annual festival to showcase the latest Animated Lifelike
Agents created by university students

and academic or industrial research groups. GALA was launched in
2005. GALA provides:

- The GALA Final event, to demonstrate the state-of-the-art in the
  technology of virtual humans.

- The GALA Jury Award for student projects and the GALA Public Award
  for any entry.

- The permanent GALA Gallery on the web with the best entries
  exhibited for further study.

- The possibility of an optional short paper (2 pages) publication in
  the proceedings of the annual 


IVA conference, published by Springer.


An international jury will select entries for the GALA Gallery, to be
presented live at the GALA Final. An award will be presented to the
best entry.  GALA is the major event for demonstrating your
interactive virtual humans, exploiting techniques in real- time
graphics, animation, multi-modal interaction, agents, emotion
modelling, dialog management and related areas. The quality and
interactive capabilities of the animated lifelike agent are to be
presented in a short movie (see Submission details). GALA is different
from and complementary to scientific conferences where demonstrations
are at most illustrations of talks, often not included in proceedings
and thus hard to reproduce. GALA specifically encourages university
students at all levels to submit their work prepared in a shorter
time, preferably as a project related to their university curriculum,
unlike the output of larger-scale research presented at conferences.

PARTICIPANTS TRACKS:
--------------------

1. Student 

Students from any university, individually or as a group, may submit
in this track. For each student submission a supervisor should be
named, who can be contacted should the jury want to clarify some
issues concerning originality of the work or status of the
authors. The works submitted in this track must be prepared within a
year prior to submission, preferably as a student project related to a
university curriculum. However, animated lifelike agents created in
the context of a larger research project or industrial application are
welcome too, as well as ones made on their developer's own initiative,
i.e.  without any background context. In the first case, the
contribution of the student to the project as well as the earlier
results built upon should be specifically emphasized.
  
2. Other 

In this track work from academic institutions and industry, as well as
from multi-party national or international projects, is welcome.

All submissions are candidates for the short list of entries, to be
presented at the final show and to be included in the
repository. Submission categories and formal requirements (see below)
are identical for both tracks.
 
SUBMISSION CATEGORIES:
----------------------

1. Novel Interaction

The animated lifelike agent should interact with the user, but in a
way that does not use a keyboard or mouse.  A simple example is to use
a video camera or a microphone, but more novel interactions may came
from using other input methods, such as wii motes, mobile phone or
Microsoft’s new project Natal.  In any case the novelty of the
interaction is key.

2. Animated Lifelike Agent Application

The animated lifelike agent is developed for an application. The movie
shows the animated lifelike agent in the application context. The
points of interest are novelty of application, smoothness of
interaction, appeal, general design, consistency, etc.

3. Animated Lifelike Agent Creation

In this category, a special feature (e.g. lip-sync, body design,
facial animation, hand gesturing) of the animated lifelike agent is to
be presented. The points of interest are modules or tools used to
create certain aspects of animated lifelike agents, in an easy way and
convincing quality.

In the last two categories, the embodiment (head/full body,
realistic/cartoon-like), the cast of role (e.g.  information provider
for the user, actor in interactive drama, educator, chatbot) and the
media (e.g. Virtual reality, PC, palmtop, mobile phone) are
open. Novel application domains, designs and media are encouraged. The
only restriction is that the animated lifelike agent must have
reactive and/or interactive capabilities, as opposed to virtual
characters animated for a single purpose (e.g. CG animation for a
film, direct usage of Motion Capture). Physical robots are not
eligible for GALA.

SUBMISSION FORMAT:
------------------

The animated lifelike agent is to be described (with the possibility
of inclusion in the IVA2010 proceedings), followed by a (.flv) movie
(to be shown at the GALA Final) of 2-4 minutes, in the first round.
The international jury will invite the entries for the second round,
to be demonstrated at the GALA Final in public, as well as a high
quality version of the video for the GALA presentation.

The submission deadlines are:
14th May 2010 - GALA short paper deadline.
1st  June 2010 - GALA flash video submission deadline.

CONTACT:
--------
Submissions should be sent to: gala2010 at ncl.ac.uk
Event Chairs: Laura Pfeifer ( laurap at ccs.neu.edu), Phil Heslop
(Philip.heslop at ncl.ac.uk)

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