AN APPROACH TO COMPUTER-SUPPORTED CARTOONING

An approach to computer-supported cartooning is described that aims at optimizing the image-related working process by introducing computer- support in the drawing and painting stages of traditional cartoon prod uction, in particular, allowing automatic coloring of a sequence of di gitized images. This is achieved by using a shape-matching algorithm t o evaluate the similarity of image regions and by performing an optimu m region assignment to identify the corresponding ones and propagate t he color information through the image sequence. In order to maintain the use of traditional drawing tools, the first step in the proposed s ystem architecture is the processing of scanned animators' drawings to enhance their quality and extract meaningful information. Two differe nt system modules allow either manual coloring of images or computer-a ssisted automatic painting of an image sequence. Additional modules al low the construction of a vector representation for the images, the ge neration of in-betweens, and the composing of each cartoon frame. The first stages of the system's architecture - image preprocessing, paint ing and vectorization - are presented. Special emphasis is placed on t he fundamental ideas behind the computer-assisted painting and vectori zation steps. The competitiveness of the approach, which requires no s pecial hardware or high-performance workstation, is shown.