[Colloq] Karan Singh, Psychorealism: A Fresh Perspective - Monday, Jan. 30, 12pm

[Rachel Kalweit]

College of Computer and Information Science Colloquium Presents:
Karan Singh
University of Toronto

Who will speak on:
Psychorealism: A Fresh Perspective

Monday, January 30, 2006
12:00pm
366 West Village H
Northeastern University

Abstract:
Computer graphics is rapidly striding toward a state where the real and 
virtual in an animation blend indistinguishably together. Beyond the 
mere exercise of recreating reality, the 2004 Oscar winning computer 
animated short film "Ryan" aims to show the realism of the messy, 
chaotic and glorious entity we call "human nature". Director Chris 
Landreth refers to this pursuit as "psychorealism". This talk showcases 
a technique quintessential to the film, which allows artists to 
transcend the linear perspective of a pin-hole camera model. The talk 
will develop a conceptual framework to construct and interactively 
control shape and illumination under nonlinear projection and address 
their implementation within a conventional animation pipeline. A number 
of applications of the framework ranging from artistic depiction to 
scientific visualization will be discussed.

Biography
Karan Singh is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at the 
University of Toronto since 2002, where he co-directs the graphics and 
HCI lab DGP (Dynamic Graphics Project). His research interests include, 
geometric design, character animation, artistic perception and 
representation of shape and 3D interaction interfaces. He received his 
B.S in Computer Science from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras 
in 1991 and MS and PhD from the Ohio State University in 1992 and 1995. 
He was a researcher at Alias Inc. from 1995-1999 where he designed and 
developed character and facial animation tools for Maya ver.1.0 and was 
involved with the design and implementation of conceptual design and 
reverse engineering software at Paraform Inc. 1999-2001. He was the 
Software R+D Director for the Oscar winning animated short film Ryan in 
2004.