Special Issue on Digitial Human Faces: From Creation to Emotion

Event Notification Type: 
Call for Papers
Abbreviated Title: 
IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications
Thursday, 17 September 2009 to Monday, 23 November 2009
Country: 
France
City: 
Paris
Submission Deadline: 
Monday, 23 November 2009

Special Issue on Digitial Human Faces: From Creation to Emotion

/IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications
/Submission deadline: 23 Nov. 2009
Target publication date: July/Aug. 2010

Faces are an important vector of communication. Through facial expressions, gaze behaviors, and head movements, faces convey information on not only a person’s emotional state and attitude but also discursive, pragmatic, and syntactic elements. The expressions result from subtle muscular contractions and wrinkle formation, and we perceive them through the complex filter of subsurface scattering and other nontrivial light reflections.

Lately, there has been much interest in modeling 3D faces and their expressions. Research has covered automatic or interactive generation of 3D geometry as well as rendering and animation techniques. This research has numerous applications. One type of application involves the creation and animation of virtual actors in films and video games. New rendering techniques ensure highly realistic skin models. Motion capture with or without markers is applied to animate the body and the face. The quality can be precise enough to capture real actor performances as well as the slightest movements in emotional expressions.

Another type of application involves the creation of autonomous agents—in particular, /embodied conversational agents/ (ECAs), autonomous entities with communicative and emotional capabilities. ECAs serve as Web assistants, pedagogical agents, or even companions. Researchers have proposed models to specify and control ECA behavior.

This special issue will broadly cover domains linked to 3D faces and their creation, rendering, and animation. In particular, it aims to gather excellent work from the computer graphics and ECA communities.

Possible topics include, but aren’t limited to, the following:

* /Facial animation/.
* /Face and performance capture/ (marker based or markerless).
* /Geometric modeling of faces/ (automatic or interactive).
* /Face and skin rendering techniques/ (subsurface scattering and real-time methods).
* /Expressing emotion/. How do you go beyond the expression of the six basic emotions? How do you represent the large palette of facial expressions of emotions? How do you model dynamic expressions? How do you model the expression of empathy?
* /Complex expressions/. Expressions can arise from the blending of emotions such as the superposition of emotions or the masking of one emotion by another. Expressions can simultaneously convey different messages.
* /Communicative expressions/. Faces don’t solely portray emotions; they convey a variety of communicative functions such as visual prosody and performative functions. How do you model and represent such expressions? How do you capture subtle variations in the production of them? How do you model mechanisms that are synchronous with speech?
* /Social signals/. Communication is socially embedded. Agents and virtual actors must be socially aware. People often use smiles and eyebrow flashes to signal their attitude toward others. How do you model facial social signals?

Submission Guidelines

Articles should be no more than 8,000 words, with each figure counting as 200 words. Cite only the 12 most relevant references, and consider providing technical background in sidebars for nonexpert readers. Color images are preferable and should be limited to 10. Visit /CG&A/ style and length guidelines at www.computer.org/cga/author.html
.

Please submit your article using the online manuscript submission service at https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/cs-ieee. When uploading your article, select the appropriate special-issue title under the category “Manuscript Type.” Also include complete contact information for all authors. If you have any questions about submitting your
article, contact the peer review coordinator at cga-ma [at] computer.org .

Questions?

Please direct any correspondence before submission to the guest editors:

* Catherine Pelachaud, catherine.pelachaud [at] telecom-paristech.fr

* Tamy Boubekeur, tamy.boubekeur [at] telecom-paristech.fr