Our first experience with signing animation dates back over 10 years with signing avatars engaged in interactive games for a Deaf literacy application.
Our first end to end animation was a piece called Get Out.
We created two versions of this – one in BSL (British Sign Language) and the other in ASL ( American Sign Language). It was through this the concept of Signimation® came into being.
Our first trials came with Lizzie Lester – Playground Detective
Comprehensibility became an issue with signing through to animals as facial dynamics are very important in sign language.
We then moved forward to human characterisation for two reasons: Comprehensibility and on-screen representation. This short BSL signing only animation was developed for thorough comprehensibility testing.
We also experimented with SEVEN sign languages.
Here are British, Irish and Chinese Sign languages all saying the same thing – all embedded into a single file.
In our journey we have now assembled a suitable precision portable mocap studio which enables us too to create signing animation productively.
Our journey so far has been supported by various small grants from UKRI and YACF and we are now ready for our final innovation to apply our creativity and technologies together for a full BILINGUAL (Signing/ Spoken) rendition to produce our ideal of a truly Deaf inclusive animation.
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