Face animation questions

[Valerie Sutton]

SignWriting List
March 28, 2004

Nikos Grammalidis from Greece wrote:
> 3) Also, we cannot understand exactly the case where more than one 
> face symbols exist in a signbox.
> First of all, can more than two such symbols exist?
> How should we deal with these transitions (assuming that we have built 
> all the individual expressions)?
> An first approach that we can think of is to divide the time range 
> allocated to the sign (which is currently
>  determined by hands/body symbols in the signbox) into n(the number of 
> face symbols) equal segments and
> then reproduce each individual expression in its corresponding time 
> segment.
>  Do you think that this is correct or do you suggest something else? 
> Regards, Nikos.


Dear SW List, and Nikos!
Thanks for this question. For the benefit of the SW List members...to 
explain...Nikos and the Greek programming team are creating a way to 
create animation, by using SignWriting...and this will be one of the 
many presentations at the SignWriting Software workshop-conference, 
that is being held in Lisbon, Portugal, on May 30th...

Anyway, Nikos, to answer your question...There are two reasons why you 
see multiple facial expressions in one written sign...

1. The mulitple facial expressions show FACIAL MOVEMENT...like several 
frames of movement in one sign...When one sign has multiple face 
positions that happen in a sequence...yes, a time line for that will 
work!

2. When there is only ONE facial expression in the sign, BUT...the 
facial circle is not large enough to hold all the detail of that ONE 
facial expression...So the one expression is broken into two 
face-pictures to give the information to the reader...

So those are the two reasons and I will be happy to show you a time 
line if you would like...Write to ask more questions if you wish -

Val ;-)