Improved automatic caricature by feature normalization and exaggeration

This sketch presents an improved formalization of automatic caricature that extends a standard approach to account for the population variance of facial features. Caricature is generally considered a rendering that emphasizes the distinctive features of a particular face. A formalization of this idea, which we term “Exaggerating the Difference from the Mean” (EDFM), is widely accepted among caricaturists [Redman 1984] and was first implemented in a groundbreaking computer program by [Brennan 1985]. Brennan’s “Caricature generator” program produced caricatures by manually defining a polyline drawing with topology corresponding to a frontal, mean, face-shape drawing, and then displacing the vertices by a constant factor away from the mean shape. Many psychological studies have applied the “Caricature Generator” or EDFM idea to investigate caricaturerelated issues in face perception [Rhodes 1997].