Dr. Nick Toothman
Associate Professor of Computer Science
Dept. of CEE/CS
Science III 322
Office/student hours:
Drop-ins: Monday/Wednesday 2:30 - 4:30 PM, Friday 9:00 - 10:00 AM
Appointments: email me or use the Canvas Calendar to schedule appointments.
Email: ntoothman at csub.edu, nick at cs.csub.edu
Song stuck in head: Bill McClintock - Yes, Dazz Band, and Dio - "Whip My Lonely, Dark Heart"

CMPS 3420 - Database Systems
CMPS 4910 - Senior Project I (two sections)
Currently on: week 1 (odd) of 16
TimeMondayTuesdayWednesdayThursdayFriday
9:00 AMOffice Hours:
9:00 - 10:00 AM
SCI III 322
10:00 AMCMPS 4910-04 Lab:
10:00 AM - 12:30 PM
SCI III 315
11:00 AMPrep:
11:00 AM - 5:00 PM
12:00 PM
1:00 PMCMPS 3420-01 Lecture:
1:00 - 2:15 PM
SCI III 311		CMPS 3420-01 Lecture:
1:00 - 2:15 PM
SCI III 311		CMPS 3420-02 Lab:
1:00 - 3:30 PM
SCI III 311		CMPS 4910-03 Lecture:
1:00 - 1:50 PM
SCI III 315
2:00 PMCMPS 4910-07 Lecture:
2:00 - 2:50 PM
SCI III 315
Office Hours:
2:30 - 4:30 PM
SCI III 322		Office Hours:
2:30 - 4:30 PM
SCI III 322
3:00 PM
Dept meeting:
3:45 - 5:00 PM
4:00 PM
5:00 PMCMPS 4910-08 Lab:
5:00 - 7:30 PM
SCI III 315
6:00 PM
7:00 PM
8:00 PM

My dissertation research explores mesh deformation for 3D character rigs with emphases on skinning, shape control, real-time performance, interactive animation, physical simulation, and virtual reality. Occasionally I post about Aestus: my animation research software.

In grad school, I was a member of the UC Davis ModLab, where I worked on Play the Knave, "an augmented reality video game for Windows that enables virtual design and performance of scenes from Shakespeare". My main contributions are the avatar animation system, Kinect components, karaoke text effect, and the Scriptmaker. Since then, I have relaunched the game as the platform MeXanimatoR.

I also really really like making shaders.

Note: some of the links will be to a colleague/co-author's hosted version. If a link no longer works, please contact me and I'll host it myself!

  1. Modeling Conflict De-Escalation in Shakespeare through Hybrid NLP & Symbolic Approaches. Nicholas Treynor, Kyle Mitchell, Nick Toothman, Gina Bloom, Colin Milburn, Michael Neff and Joshua McCoy. 2025 IEEE Conference on Games (CoG), Lisbon, Portugal, 2025, pp. 1-2, doi: 10.1109/CoG64752.2025.11114309.
  2. Experimenting with Shakespeare: Games and Play in the Laboratory By Gina Bloom, Evan Buswell, Colin Milburn, and Nick Toothman. Santa Barbara: EMC Imprint, 2024.
  3. Digital exhibit: "Play the Knave: Experimenting with Shakespeare in Mixed Reality and Virtual Reality." Gina Bloom, Colin Milburn, and Nicholas Toothman. Hosted at the 52nd Annual Meeting of the Shakespeare Association of America, April 10-12, 2024, Portland, Oregon.
  4. Play the Knave as a finalist in the 2023 GEE! Learning Game Awards category for small & indie games.
  5. Play the Knave, Winner of Best AR/VR Experience for the Game Exhibition at the International Conference on Meaningful Play 2022, Oct 12-14, 2022, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan.
  6. “Playful Pedagogy and Social Justice: Digital Embodiment in the Shakespeare Classroom.” Gina Bloom, Nicholas Toothman, and Evan Buswell. Shakespeare Survey 74, special issue on “Shakespeare and Education” (2021): 30-50.
  7. Spring Rigs for Skinning, Nicholas Toothman and Michael Neff, ACM SIGGRAPH Conference on Motion, Interaction and Games, 2019. Video, ACM DL
  8. The Impact of Avatar Tracking Errors on User Experience in VR, Nicholas Toothman and Michael Neff, IEEE VR, 2019. Video
  9. Attachment-based character deformation, Nick Toothman, Michael Neff. Proceedings of the ACM SIGGRAPH / Eurographics Symposium on Computer Animation (SCA), 2017. Poster
  10. "A Whole Theater of Others": Amateur Acting and Immersive Spectatorship in the Digital Shakespeare Game Play the Knave, Gina Bloom, Sawyer Kemp, Nicholas Toothman, and Evan Buswell. Shakespeare Quarterly 67.4 (2016): 408-430. Paper if Folger's version is unavailable.
  11. Embodying Digital Creativity: Designing Computer Tools to Support Spontaneity and Creative Work in the Arts, Nicholas Toothman, Tyler Martin and Michael Neff. in Digital Movement: Essays in Motion Technology and Performance, ed. Sita Popat and Nick Salazar, Palgrave MacMillan, 2014.
  12. Don't Scratch! Self-adaptors Reflect Emotional Stability, Michael Neff, Nicholas Toothman, Robeson Bowmani, Jean E. Fox Tree, and Marilyn Walker. Proceedings of Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVA'11), Springer LNAI, 14 pages, 2011.