Offline Painted Media for Digital Animation Authoring

Makoto NakajimaDaisuke SakamotoTakeo IgarashiThe University of Tokyo

CHI’14 @ Toronto

Digital technologies have made authoring animations easier

than in the past days.

A Problem"Because artists use a similar combination of software, their work becomes similar in appearance."(Koga, N., 2012, translated by the presenter)

Digital Paints Physical Paints/

Flat colors(in Flash-style animations)

Organic colors,strokes, and textures

For example,

Animation that consists of limited number of images, and key-framed properties.

Objective:• To use offline painted media with digital animations.• To enhance individualism and analog atmosphere.

We propose a workflow of animation authoring to incorporate the diversity of physical media.

Especially for creating Flash-style animations with offline painted media.

In this talk, we show• workflow design• system implementation• design evaluation & user feedback

Workflow Design

Animation authoring consists of a number of different tasks;

• planning• drawing• painting• compositing

Ancient WorkflowWorks were produced in an all-offline environment.

In this talk,• Offline = analog = without computer• Online = digital = with computer

Modern WorkflowThese procedures has been replaced by digital tool.

Modern WorkflowThese procedures has been replaced by digital tool.

Offline painting is important to enhance individualism.

Because illustrators have good skills in offline painting.

Here

Proposed WorkflowEasy to incorporate the diversity of physical media.

Related Work

Assistance for Animation AuthoringK-Sketch (Davis, R. C., 2008)

• Presented animation sketching

-> Offline media wasn’t taken care.

Animation with Offline Painted MediaVideo Puppetry (Barnes, C., 2008)

• Captures movements of painted paper cutouts

-> Users can’t benefit from digital supports when drawing and puppetting.

Imitating Offline PaintingsMAI painting brush (Otsuki, M., 2010)

• Painting device used in mixed-reality environment

Realbrush (Lu, J., 2013)

• Use scanned images to synthesize stroke appearances

-> Illustrators have their favorite physical instruments and specialized skills on it.

Utilizing Offline MaterialsPaper augmented digital documents (Guimbretière, F., 2008)

• Digital data is exported to, and imported from paper

-> The target was text documents only, not for animation.

System Implementation

Sketch Print Paint Scan Composite

Steps

1. Animation Planning2. Image Packing and Printing3. Offline Painting4. Scanning5. Animation Reconstruction

1. Sketch Interface for Drawing and Planning

1. Sketch Interface for Drawing and Planning

Animation data is stored as a tree structure.

2. Image Packing and Printing

2. Image Packing and PrintingOur system calculates positions of each layer on a paper according to the tree data structure.

Document Scenes Layers Printout→ → →

2. Image Packing and Printing

3. Offline Painting

3. Offline Painting

User paints the printout by• Color pencil (image)• Oil painting• Water painting• Marker• (anything if scannable)

4. ScanningUser scans painted papers as digital images.

4. ScanningOur system supports the user to process scanned images.

Manual• 4-point calibration• Background removal

Automatic• Resize• Crop each panel

5. Animation ReconstructionOur system automatically reconstructs an animation.

DocumentScenesLayersPrintout → → →

5. Animation Reconstruction

5. Animation Reconstruction

Exporting to Adobe Aftereffects.

Design Evaluation and User Feedback

Preliminary User StudyTo collect qualitative feedbacks for future improvement.

We recruited three participants.1. Comic illustrator (P1)2. Oil painter (P2)3. Comic illustrator (P3)

• All participants were males and in their late twenties.• No experience with the project.• No experience in animation authoring.

Evaluation Process

1. Pre-test questionnaire

2. Introduction to the system

3. Planning and Sketching (P1, P3)4. Printing and Painting (P2, P3)5. Scanning and Reconstruction (P3)

6. Post-test questionnaire and interview.

Results

Participant 1

Task:P1 planned an animation (20min).Authors painted printouts using color pencils.

P1 created.

Authors painted using color pencils.

Participant 2

Task:Authors planned an animation.P2 painted the printouts using oil paintings (1week).

• Oil painting needs time to dry and paint.

Authors created.

P2 painted using oil paints.

Participant 3

Task1:Authors planned an animation.P3 painted printouts by Copic marker (1h 45min).

Task2:P3 planned animation (1h 50min).P3 painted printouts using Copic marker (45 min).P3 reconstructed the animation (3min).

P3 painted using Copic markers.

P3 made and painted using Copic markers.

User Feedbacks

Generally good impressions.They could save labors to export to and import from offline media.Their skills in offline painting could be incorporated to digital animations.

Quality of animation.Diverse stroke styles and textures can be observed in the animation.

Problem while offline painting.They felt hard to imagine final composition. - From which direction the light comes? - Which balloon is for which script?

Limitations1. Our layer positioning method can be improved.

2. The scanning process can be automated.

3. It may not be sufficient to capture only RGB values of the painted media. BRDF and surface bumps can be captured.

Conclusion

We proposeda workflow of animation authoring to incorporate the diversity of physical media.

BenefitOur proposed workflow can incorporate old techniques, wisdom, practices, and histories of arts into the latest technologies, instead of completely replacing them.

Utilizing offline physical media for digital authoring brings new possibilities to artists to use their existing skills in computer animations.

Thank you!