Student-Produced Video

Jaime's Research Experience

Jaime is a high school student who participated in a summer research experience at the lab during June-August 2010. He recorded a video blog entry in which he described his experience at the lab. An English translation of the video is included below.



English Translation

My name is Jaime Penzellna and worked here for 8 weeks during the summer at the LATLab on the computer animation for ASL (American Sign Language) project. I've learned a lot of things here. Many signers have come to the lab during my time here this summer. The signers are fluent in ASL and English, and we put special suits on them so that we can record them signing and detect their movements using the computer. This process is called motion capture. There are several steps required to ensure exact movements are transferred to the computer’s animated character. After we have made a recording, then first, I had to check and highlight all the videos which were performed by the signers. I analyzed their movements (such as eye brows, eye gaze, shoulders, and the like) using a program called SignStream. Second, the videos are checked again to make sure everything flows smoothly. Also, we sometimes produce movements with a computer animated character using a program called Gesture Builder. In fact, Gesture Builder is my favorite program to use here. It creates new animations of signs, anyway you want them to move. You have complete control over the character’s movements, which is nice. I learned a lot, and this was really a great experience for me to participate in Matt’s research program at the LATLab.

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