Hair motion cloning from cartoon animation sequences

Abstract

This paper describes a new approach to create cartoon hair animation that allows users to use existing cel character animation sequences. We demonstrate the generation of cartoon hair animation accentuated in ‘anime-like’ motions. The novelty of this method is that users can choose the existing cel animation of a character's hair animation and apply environmental elements such as wind to other characters with a three-dimensional structure. In fact, users can reuse existing cartoon sequences as input to endow another character with environmental elements as if both characters exist in the same scene. A three-dimensional character's hair motions are created based on hair motions from input cartoon animation sequences. First, users extract hair shapes at each frame from input sequences from which they then construct physical equations. ‘Anime-like’ hair motion is created by using these physical equations. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.