Face alive icon

In this paper, we propose a methodology to synthesize facial expressions from photographs for devices with limited processing power, network bandwidth and display area, which is referred as “LLL” environment. The facial images are reduced to small-sized face alive icons (FAI). Expressions are decomposed into the expression-unrelated facial features and the expression-related expressional features. As a result, the common features can be identified and reused across expressions using a discrete model constructed from the statistical analysis on training dataset. Semantic synthesis rules are introduced to reveal the inner relations of expressions. Verified by the experimental prototype system and usability study, the approach can produce acceptable facial expression images utilizing much less computing, network and storage resource than the traditional approaches.