Animated emoji in augmented reality (AR) enables users to create a humanoid version of themselves that mimics their facial expressions dynamically. In this study, we aim to explore how people perceive facial skin color in digital portrait in comparison with humanoid emoji in AR. We tried to identify the skin color representative regions and to estimate the color difference between the two contexts. We conducted a user study comprised of three tasks with 20 graduate students majoring in design and employed 24 portrait images in four skin tone categories. Through the user study, we first figured out that forehead and cheek regions, and particularly the linking band between eye and lip, were often considered as the representative region of facial skin color. Second, we observed skin colors become lighter in general, except dark tone. Furthermore, concerning the vidvidness, all four skin tone types became paler in humanoid emoji. Diverse ethnicities and contexts are expected in the future to provide a more robust and reliable analysis of the perception of skin color.
Yuchun Yan, Hyeon-Jeong Suk, "Skin Color Perception in Portrait Image and AR-based Humanoid Emoji" in Proc. IS&T 28th Color and Imaging Conf., 2020, pp 114 - 118, https://doi.org/10.2352/issn.2169-2629.2020.28.17