High-Tech NZSL Children Book Library Phase 2
This project was continued from the last round. We created two books with digital humans - The Very Hungry Caterpillar and Kiwi One Kiwi Two. We also created vocabulary lists for all 6 books in total (4 from the previous round).
About the project
This project was a continuation of the previous project, where we had translated four children’s books into NZSL using our avatar “Niki” in collaboration with Ko Taku Reo Deaf Education NZ. Those books were very well-received by both students and teachers. The books were:
- We’re Going on a Bear Hunt by Helen Oxenbury
- The Very Cranky Bear by Nick Bland
- The Tuatara and the Skink by Yvonne Morrison
- The Seven Kites of Matariki by Calico McClintock
In the new phase, we again worked with Ko Taku Reo to translate two new books (The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle and Kiwi One and Kiwi Two (also known as Kiwi Tahi rāua ko Kiwi Rua) by Stephanie Thatcher. We also created the vocab lists for all six books in total.
Since the previous phase, we updated both our Motion Capture and avatar technologies. The end results show a great improvement in hand movements and facial expressions - and it allowed us to use different avatars for different books.
The Very Hungry Caterpillar was the most entertaining project that we created, and it is available on YouTube with 59K views worldwide!
The second book (Kiwi One and KiwiTwo) has two versions, English and Te Reo. The English version of the book is narrated by the author herself, which was a massive achievement!
Feedback about our work
When we released the books, many people thought that the avatars were actual human beings, and were incredibly surprised to find out that the books were being signed by a digital human. We keep getting asked when we can release another book or requesting certain books to be translated with avatars. It shows that there is a big demand for this.
The students and teachers who we surveyed also liked the books and gave us constructive feedback to improve the future books, which we hope we can get funding to create.
Some of the quotes that we’ve received from the surveys were:
- “Very beautiful and engaging" Teacher - K1K2
- "The pace was good, the facial expressions were very detailed, setting up the scene was well done." Teacher - TVHC
- "This would be great for language development for new learners." Teacher - TVHC
We also have quotes from the members of the team, who did the translation and animations.
“For the project where I was involved in TVHC, it is a priceless experience. Doing the translating with Pollyanna who is a teacher herself was fun and challenging at times because of how we see things and process them differently. (That’s coming from me as TAG.) It felt like a golden opportunity that no one should not miss it.”
- Matthew Flynn from Ko Taku Reo.“The NZSL book project was an amazing experience to be part of. It was a great learning experience for the animation team. Not only in exploring new technical innovations to create the avatars but also learning about NZSL and how it can be used to communicate the amazing kids stories into videos for learning. We managed to achieve incredible results with this new technology that the team can be proud of and use it going forward within future projects.”
- Richard Falla, senior animator from Kara Technologies.