JAPAN: FACE PROJECTION Artist bends the mind by changing people's faces

Record ID: 468459

  • Title: JAPAN: FACE PROJECTION Artist bends the mind by changing people's faces
  • Date: 29th August 2014
  • Summary: TOKYO, JAPAN (AUGUST 28, 2014) (REUTERS) FASHION MODEL, YUKA SEKIMIZU, WALKING IN AND SITTING DOWN VARIOUS OF FACE OF SEKIMIZU BEING SCANNED AND THREE-DIMENSIONAL IMAGE OF VIRTUAL FACE WITH MAKE UP BEING PROJECTED ON HER FACE MERCURY-LIKE VISUAL IMAGE WASHING OVER HER FACE AND VIRTUAL LINES DEFINING FACE SECTION PLATES PROJECTED ON HER BLUE EYES OPENING AND MODEL TURNING H
  • Embargoed: 13th September 2014 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Japan
  • Country: Japan
  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVAEA4FJSGH2QLAS4STF6JIX0B4P
  • Story Text: The day when people choose what expressions to wear rather than betray their feelings on their faces may be near.
    Artist Nobumichi Asai has found a way to project and map expressions onto people's faces, effectively creating a facial mask.
    He and his team displayed their three-dimensional facial projection mapping system on Thursday (August 28) to a select group of spectators in Tokyo.
    "It's my image on the screen and expressions are appearing on my face. It's really interesting. It's me but it's not me at the same time," said fashion model Yuka Sekimizu, who has been with the project from the start.
    She usually walks on runways, but had to shave her eyebrows for this.
    By day, Asai is a technical director and producer working on projection mapping entertainment shows for clients including car brand Subaru, but six months ago began this project when he saw Samsung do a facial mapping project with the subject standing still a few years back.
    Unimpressed with Samsung's lack of tracking and the quality of the computer graphics projected then, he was given the idea for a better quality of facial expression generation.
    Asai then gathered his friends to form a team consisting of a make-up artist, a programmer, a computer-graphics artist and a specialist in motion-tracking technology to see what they could do with a human face.
    "I always thought the face was interesting. Women are constantly aware of it, of how even the smallest, random draw or doodle can provide a huge impact. I wondered how interesting it would be if you used the face as a canvas for digital expression and that's how I started this project," he told Reuters Television.
    The team drew inspiration from the sense of beauty inherent in traditional Japanese culture, animation and technology.
    His make-up artist friend, Hiroto Kuwahara, in charge of the artistic direction and make-up of the virtual face, named the project "Omote," which means face, or front, in Japanese.
    But the team quickly discovered that simply projecting a totally symmetrical face seen typically in games would produce a "barbie doll," killing the realism, encouraging them instead to design a face asymmetrically, introducing subtle flaws.
    But the most difficult part were the eyes.
    During initial trials, the eyes would be expressionless and dead, making the model extremely scary, which Kuwahara likened it to the emotionless face of a "hired killer."
    He met with a Noh master, the Japanese classical musical drama whose performers use masks, who showed him over 100 Noh masks which Kuwahara studied in detail, replicating expressions through the eyes.
    They studied how human eyes changes its shape with emotion and made sure that the virtual pupils on their projection contract and dilate just like our own.
    "The staff on this project, including me, infused this project with the pride we have for Japan's sense of beauty," Asai said.
    "When we did that, someone who saw the video left a comment saying she was proud to be Japanese and we were emotionally moved becase we felt our feelings were understood," he added.
    The room was filled with spectators ranging from artists to technology writers.
    "It would be emotional and a new sensation if you projected the face of the person who passed away at a funeral," said Yui Kashima who is an editor at the technology site Gizmodo.
    "I was very moved because I saw the dream-like future that I imagined when I was a young girl becoming reality," said singer Yukiko Okada.
    Asai and his team are currently looking for funding to take the project, a personal one of the artist's, to the next level, considering how they might be able to project on the human body next.
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