cartoon face animation

[robodude]

Hi,

I am currently working on some project using ROS http://wiki.ros.org/
I want to create a module which will be displaing an interactive, 2D cartoon-like face, sth like this:
dep_5967912-Various-male-cartoon-faces.jpg

The face has to be interactive in meaning I should be possible to nice animate eyes movement and mouth movement(during speaking and to express emotions like smile, etc.).

My first thought was to implement it with qtgraphicsview framework, then I would have qgraphicsitems like eyes, mouth, eye-brows, etc. It would be apropriate for me as I am already familiar with Qt and it is already delivered with ROS.

However I am not sure is it the right way... have you ever tried to do things like this with Qt?
Maybe should I consider using some other tools/libraries to have this work easier?

I don't have any experience with animation hence I am looking for any advices.

I will apreciate any help

Thanks in advance

[aamer4yu]

I guess drawing animated faces wont be straightforward.

If you are not much of a designer, I would suggest go for some animated gif's and play them depending on the emotion.

If you go for manual drawing, you will need to morph images to show the emotions, which I guess is not something easy.

[robodude]

OK, thanks for reply.

I didn't mention that controling eyes is essential: it should keep eye contact with a person detected by camera. Hence I am not sure if it is possible with animated gif.

Maybe I should consider using OpenGl and some model exported from Blender? Eye movement would be just rotation but how to implement lips movements? It doesn't have to be much complicated, just smiling, and moving while speaking.

If you have any other advices I will very gratefull.

[davidovv]

it should keep eye contact with a person detected by camera

When someone looks at camera while taking a photo, and you are looking at that photo, it looks at you no mater the position or angle you are looking from.
So eyes movement on your animated character wouldn't keep eye contact at all, it will look more like trying to avoid eye contact (except when you are in the middle of capture).

person detected by camera

for face detection you should look at opencv library, but with my previous comment in mind, do you need it?

as for animation, take small steps first, with just few images for all vocals, few for consonants, and emotions, show them in sequence depending on words, see how it goes