A FACE IMAGE GENERATION SYSTEM FOR TRANSFORMING THREE DIMENSIONS OF HIGHER-ORDER IMPRESSION

The present paper describes the application of an improved impression transfer vector method (Sakurai et al., 2007) to transform the three basic dimensions (Evaluation, Activity, and Potency) of higher-order impression. First, a set of shapes and surface textures of faces was represented by multi-dimensional vectors. Second, the variation among faces was coded in reduced parameters derived by applying principal component analysis. Third, a facial attribute along a given impression dimension was analyzed to select discriminative parameters from among principal components with higher sensitivity to impressions, and obtain an impression transfer vector. Finally, the parametric coordinates were changed by adding or subtracting the impression transfer vector and the image was manipulated so that its facial appearance clearly exhibits the transformed impression. A psychological rating experiment confirmed that the impression transfer vector modulated three dimensions of higher-order impression. We discussed the versatility of the impression transfer vector method.