Keith Waters (born 1962 in

Kent, England Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces the ...

) is a British animator who is best known for his work in the field of computer facial animation. He has received international awards from Parigraph, the National Computer Graphics Association and the Computer Animation Film Festival.

Early life

Keith Waters was born in

Kent Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...

in 1962 and attended

Sevenoaks School Sevenoaks School is a highly selective coeducational independent school in Sevenoaks, Kent, England. It is the second oldest non-denominational school in the United Kingdom, dating back to 1432, only behind Oswestry (1407). Over 1,000 day pupils ...

. He received his PhD from

Middlesex University Middlesex University London (legally Middlesex University and abbreviated MDX) is a public research university in Hendon, northwest London, England. The name of the university is taken from its location within the historic county boundaries ...

(UK) in 1988 after completing a BA in

Graphic Design Graphic design is a profession, academic discipline and applied art whose activity consists in projecting visual communications intended to transmit specific messages to social groups, with specific objectives. Graphic design is an interdiscipli ...

at Cat Hill

Barnet Barnet may refer to: People *Barnet (surname) * Barnet (given name) Places United Kingdom *Chipping Barnet or High Barnet, commonly known as Barnet, one of three focal towns of the borough below. *East Barnet, a district of the borough below; an ...

. His early work on

algorithms In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm () is a finite sequence of rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific problems or to perform a computation. Algorithms are used as specifications for performing c ...

for face animation in 1986 allowed him to transfer from a

MPhil The Master of Philosophy (MPhil; Latin ' or ') is a postgraduate degree. In the United States, an MPhil typically includes a taught portion and a significant research portion, during which a thesis project is conducted under supervision. An MPhil m ...

to a PhD while studying under the supervision of Paul Brown and John Vince at

Middlesex Polytechnic Middlesex University London (legally Middlesex University and abbreviated MDX) is a public research university in Hendon, northwest London, England. The name of the university is taken from its location within the historic county boundaries of ...

at the Centre for Advanced Studies in Computer Aided Art and Design. His studies required numerous trips to

Bounds Green Bounds Green is a residential suburb just north of Wood Green, in the London Borough of Haringey in north London. Parts of it are also known as New Southgate, but most of New Southgate lies in the London Borough of Enfield to the north-west. B ...

to use the computing facilities within the school of engineering. Waters is best known for his work in

computer facial animation Computer facial animation is primarily an area of computer graphics that encapsulates methods and techniques for generating and animating images or models of a character face. The character can be a human, a humanoid, an animal, a legendary creatu ...

that includes a muscle-based model for facial animation, a physically-based skin tissue model as well as a visual

text-to-speech Speech synthesis is the artificial production of human speech. A computer system used for this purpose is called a speech synthesizer, and can be implemented in software or hardware products. A text-to-speech (TTS) system converts normal languag ...

system called DECface. He is a co-author of the book "Computer Facial Animation"2nd edition: Frederic Parke and Keith Waters, Computer Facial Animation, 2008, Natick: A. K. Peters Press Ltd., 454pp. a guide to

facial animation Computer facial animation is primarily an area of computer graphics that encapsulates methods and techniques for generating and animating images or models of a character face. The character can be a human, a humanoid, an animal, a legendary creatu ...

. The first edition published in 1995 and a second edition was published in 2008. His muscle algorithms for face animation were widely used in the computer film industry, most notably by

Pixar Pixar Animation Studios (commonly known as Pixar () and stylized as P I X A R) is an American computer animation studio known for its critically and commercially successful computer animated feature films. It is based in Emeryville, Californi ...

, which first used the technique in their animation short

Tin Toy ''Tin Toy'' is a 1988 American computer-animated short film produced by Pixar and directed by John Lasseter. The short film, which runs five minutes, stars Tinny, a tin one-man band toy, attempting to escape from Billy, an infant. The third sho ...

. Waters was the director of engineering device software at Nexage, prior to that a principal architect at Akamai Technologies Inc., and previously a Director of Research at Orange Labs, Boston MA, USA. Keith has been active in

Human Computer Interaction Humans (''Homo sapiens'') are the most abundant and widespread species of primate, characterized by bipedalism and exceptional cognitive skills due to a large and complex brain. This has enabled the development of advanced tools, culture, ...

(HCI) and has published scientific papers on novel applications. He has been engaged with the

W3C The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web. Founded in 1994 and led by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations that maintain full-time staff working to ...

is the development of Web standards for the mobile Web.Delivery Context: Client Interfaces (DCCI) 1.0. Accessing Static and Dynamic Delivery Context Properties, W3C Candidate Recommendation, 2007

Professional career

After graduating from the Centre for Advanced Studies in Computer Aided Art and Design (now the Lansdown Centre for Electronic Arts) at

in 1988 with a PhD in

computer graphics Computer graphics deals with generating images with the aid of computers. Today, computer graphics is a core technology in digital photography, film, video games, cell phone and computer displays, and many specialized applications. A great de ...

, Keith Waters worked for

Schlumberger Schlumberger Limited (), doing business as SLB, is an oilfield services company. Schlumberger has four principal executive offices located in Paris, Houston, London, and The Hague. Schlumberger is the world's largest offshore drilling compa ...

Palo Alto Palo Alto (; Spanish for "tall stick") is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a coastal redwood tree known as El Palo Alto. The city was estab ...

and then at their Research Lab for Computer Science Austin Texas where he worked on parallel CM-2 data visualization. In 1991 he joined the Cambridge Research Lab of

Digital Equipment Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC ), using the trademark Digital, was a major American company in the computer industry from the 1960s to the 1990s. The company was co-founded by Ken Olsen and Harlan Anderson in 1957. Olsen was president until ...

Boston MA where he continued to work on user interfaces including DECface the visual equivalent of

DECtalk DECtalk was a speech synthesizer and text-to-speech technology developed by Digital Equipment Corporation in 1983, based largely on the work of Dennis Klatt at MIT, whose source-filter algorithm was variously known as KlattTalk or MITalk. U ...

the

engine. Later, he went on to create the FaceWorks product that was used at

Comdex COMDEX (an abbreviation of COMputer Dealers' EXhibition) was a computer expo trade show held in the Las Vegas Valley of Nevada, United States, each November from 1979 to 2003. It was one of the largest computer trade shows in the world, usually ...

. While at

Compaq Compaq Computer Corporation (sometimes abbreviated to CQ prior to a 2007 rebranding) was an American information technology company founded in 1982 that developed, sold, and supported computers and related products and services. Compaq produced ...

he invented a variety of user interfaces including the first Smart Kiosk, the invisible mouse, an image-based

touchscreen A touchscreen or touch screen is the assembly of both an input ('touch panel') and output ('display') device. The touch panel is normally layered on the top of an electronic visual display of an information processing system. The display is often ...

and a wallable macrodevice. He worked on film and television high-performance face animation techniques at LifeF/X before joining Orange in 2001 where he became a senior expert in mobile services developing next-generation mobile

Web Web most often refers to: * Spider web, a silken structure created by the animal * World Wide Web or the Web, an Internet-based hypertext system Web, WEB, or the Web may also refer to: Computing * WEB, a literate programming system created by ...

technologies for high performance

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

devices. Recently he was a principal architect at

Akamai Technologies Akamai Technologies, Inc. is an American content delivery networkJ. Dilley, B. Maggs, J. Parikh, H. Prokop, R. Sitaraman, and B. Weihl. (CDN), cybersecurity, and cloud service company, providing web and Internet security services. Akamai's Inte ...

Inc., assisting them with their mobile strategy.

Awards

Keith Waters received international awards from Parigraph, the National Computer Graphics Association and the Computer Animation Film Festival for his animation shorts on face animation and in particular for the sequences of the Queen and Margaret Thatcher in 1986. The computer-generated characters were generated from the animated puppets of

Spitting Image ''Spitting Image'' is a British satirical television puppet show, created by Peter Fluck, Roger Law and Martin Lambie-Nairn. First broadcast in 1984, the series was produced by 'Spitting Image Productions' for Central Independent Television ov ...

which were kindly moulded specifically for his research by

Roger Law Roger Law (born 6 September 1941, in Littleport, Cambridgeshire), is a British caricaturist, ceramist and one half of ''Luck and Flaw'' (with Peter Fluck), creators of the popular satirical TV puppet show ''Spitting Image''. Roger Law was a pi ...

and

Peter Fluck Peter Nigel Fluck (born 7 April 1941) is a British caricaturist and one half of the partnership known as ''Luck and Flaw'' (with Roger Law), creators of the popular satirical TV puppet show ''Spitting Image''. He attended Cambridgeshire High ...

References

External links

at Interaction Design Foundation * {{DEFAULTSORT:Waters, Keith 1962 births Living people People from Kent Alumni of Middlesex University Computer graphics professionals English animators

Early life

Professional career

Awards

See also

References

Further reading

External links