Keith Waters

Keith Waters (born 1962 in Kent, England) 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.

Waters was born in Kent in 1962 and attended Sevenoaks School. He received his PhD from Middlesex University (UK) in 1988 after completing a BA in Graphic Design at Cat Hill Barnet. His early work on algorithms for face animation in 1986 allowed him to transfer from a MPhil to a PhD while studying under the supervision of Paul Brown and John Vince at Middlesex Polytechnic at the Centre for Advanced Studies in Computer Aided Art and Design. His studies required numerous trips to Bounds Green to use the computing facilities within the school of engineering.

He is best known for his work in computer facial animation that includes a muscle-based model for facial animation, a physically based skin tissue model as well as a visual text-to-speech system called DECface. He is co-author of the book "Computer Facial Animation" a guide to facial animation. 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, which first used the technique in their animation short Tin Toy.

He 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 (HCI) and has published scientific papers on novel applications. He has been engaged with the W3C is the development of Web standards for the mobile Web.

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