Speech Animation in Paintings

For this week’s original posting, I would like to address the technological achievements in relation to art and media. Although this video is only a couple years old, the technology used to create this is unbelievable and to this day not used widely. In this video, the director uses numerous famous paintings such as the Mona Lisa which are digitally altered to mimic actions such as lip syncing to begin talking.

The technology used to do this is similar to that used by CG animators in recording movements for character animations. The major achievement here is the ability to alter a still 2D image and enable it to manipulate the area around the mouth without distorting the original image. The director later uses a still photograph of himself in order to demonstrate the programs ability to manipulate various forms of portraits. This program enables the manipulation of images from various angles eliminating the need to recreate a 3D version of an original painting to achieve the same or similar effect. If anybody watches SpongeBob Square Pants, the opening includes a cheesy version of this which uses an overlapping layer of a person’s mouth to simulate speech, but with this type of technology, we can animate all type of images in a similar fashion. Imagine being able to manipulate an entire scene based on pinpoint interactions and movement from a human source. You could quite possibly reenact an image such as events in the Revolutionary War with proper time and development. As technology progresses, it is not certain what we can accomplish with this type of digital ability.