Evaluation of a talking head based on appearance models

In this paper we describe how 2D appearance models can be applied to the problem of creating a near-videorealistic talking head. A speech corpus of a talker uttering a set of phonetically balanced training sentences is analysed using a generative model of the human face. Segments of original parameter trajectories corresponding to the synthesis unit are extracted from a codebook, normalised, blended, concatenated and smoothed before being applied to the model to give natural, realistic animations of novel utterances. We also present some early results of subjective tests conducted to determine the realism of the synthesiser.