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Animation of hand‐drawn sketches is an adorable art. It allows the animator to generate animations with expressive freedom and requires significant expertise. In this work, we introduce a novel sketch animation framework designed to address inherent challenges, such as motion extraction, motion transfer, and occlusion. The framework takes an exemplar video input featuring a moving object and utilizes a robust motion transfer technique to animate the input sketch. We show comparative evaluations that demonstrate the superior performance of our method over existing sketch animation techniques. Notably, our approach exhibits a higher level of user accessibility in contrast to conventional sketch‐based animation systems, positioning it as a promising contributor to the field of sketch animation. https://graphics-research-group.github.io/SketchAnim/ [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emergence of learning‐based motion in‐betweening techniques offers animators a more efficient way to animate characters. However, existing non‐generative methods either struggle to support long transition generation or produce results that lack diversity. Meanwhile, diffusion models have shown promising results in synthesizing diverse and high‐quality motions driven by text and keyframes. However, in these methods, keyframes often serve as a guide rather than a strict constraint and can sometimes be ignored when keyframes are sparse. To address these issues, we propose a lightweight yet effective diffusion‐based motion in‐betweening framework that generates animations conforming to keyframe constraints. We incorporate keyframe constraints into the training phase to enhance robustness in handling various constraint densities. Moreover, we employ relative positional encoding to improve the model's generalization on long range in‐betweening tasks. This approach enables the model to learn from short animations while generating realistic in‐betweening motions spanning thousands of frames. We conduct extensive experiments to validate our framework using the newly proposed metrics K‐FID, K‐Diversity, and K‐Error, designed to evaluate generative in‐betweening methods. Results demonstrate that our method outperforms existing diffusion‐based methods across various lengths and keyframe densities. We also show that our method can be applied to text‐driven motion synthesis, offering fine‐grained control over the generated results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the months following the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, faculty in all sectors of higher education scrambled to find solutions for teaching and learning safely. This article examines a pedagogical partnership between acting and animation professors who devised a series of collaborative classroom projects for their students. The two faculty reflect on the outcomes of the project, which unfolded in three different iterations over two semesters and brought undergraduate and graduate students together in collaborative, cross-disciplinary teams. An aspirational vision for future collaborations sets out how this pedagogical partnership might be further developed to enhance students' training and learning in both the visual and performing arts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Creating facial animations using 3D computer graphics represents a very laborious and time-consuming task. Among the numberless approaches for animating faces, the use of blendshapes remains the most common solution because of their simplicity and the ability to produce high-quality results. This approach, however, is also characterized by important drawbacks. With the traditional animation suites, to select the blendshapes to be activated animators are generally requested to memorize the mapping between the blendshapes and the influenced mesh vertices; alternatively, they need to adopt a trial-and-error search within the whole library of available blendshapes. Moreover, the level of expressiveness that can be reached may be lower than expected; this is due to the fact that the possibility to apply transformations to vertices different than just linear translations and mechanisms for adding, e.g., exaggerations, are typically not integrated into the same animation environment. To tackle these issues, this article proposes an immersive virtual reality-based interface that leverages sketches for the direct manipulation of blendshapes. Animators can draw both linear and curved strokes, which are used to automatically extract information about the blendshape to be activated and its weight, the trajectories that associated vertices have to follow, as well as the timing of the overall animation. A user study was carried out with the aim of evaluating the proposed approach on several representative animations tasks. Both objective and subjective measurements were collected. Experimental results showed the benefits of the devised interface in terms of task completion time, animation accuracy, and usability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This issue addresses the historical invisibility of women and genderqueer animators. It is part of several continued efforts to document their contributions, raise awareness about their animated work, and centre the voices of female and genderqueer animators in the academic discourse of animation. The editorial provides brief overviews of each article, making emphasis on their shared themes and connections. In this issue we can find a wide range of critical perspectives, that examine how these animators face conventional representations. The authors analyse independent filmmaking and animated documentaries that break conventional animation practices, using feminist approaches and defying dominant narratives. Furthermore, our articles offer a wide range of points of view, including feminist critiques on the construction of iconic Disney princesses and the impact of gender-inclusive writing in contemporary animated series. We aim to contribute to a more inclusive appreciation and wider understanding of the present and future of animation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We introduce an interactive tool to intuitively make inbetween charts for cutout character movements (i.e., transitioning from one image to another), inspired by cartoon animators' techniques. Given several keyframes, this system constructs trajectory-guided sliders that enable users to directly adjust inbetween values on a screen. In addition, these sliders can visualize simple inbetween timings to provide guidance on cartoon-like motions, such as animating "on twos" and "slow-in/out" in the background of the slider. Thus, the users can intuitively explore inbetween charts until they are satisfied. This method is simple enough to easily implement in existing animation-authoring tools. We conduct a user study with novice and amateur users and confirm that the proposed slider (including the guidance function) is effective for manually constructing the inbetween charts envisioned by the users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Identifying and implementing equitable participatory planning processes is challenging for city planners. Through a qualitative analysis of the Families and Educators for Safe Cycling Project (FESC), an active school travel (AST) project in Toronto (Canada), we identify a potential new path to increase the range of voices heard by planners and decision makers. Specifically, we present community animation and animators as an effective approach for community engagement in AST planning through analyzing 27 semistructured interviews, reviewing key project documents, and coding key themes. We showcase how community animation can play a key role in the meaningful engagement of school communities by deepening and enriching the participatory planning process. We conclude by suggesting that community animators can foster more equitable participatory planning processes by working to include historically marginalized communities within urban planning. Specific groups of people, such as school communities, continue to be excluded from participatory planning processes. By providing insights into the value of community animators, this research allows planners to understand, conceptualize, and apply more equitable participatory planning processes during infrastructure development. Though the case is based on a specific program related to AST in Toronto, the results can assist planners in other communities in enriching their local engagement processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The poetic group Cántico developed its work mainly between the 40s and 50s of the last century in Córdoba (Spain). Until 2011, the interest aroused in Hispanic literary historiography focused on the eccentric poetic space they occupied in post-civil war literature. The publication of the Diario by Juan Bernier, the main animator of the group, surprised and overwhelmed by the exhaustiveness and crudeness with which he reconstructs his homosexual pederastic practices, those of his companions and the repressive environment against dissent, specially through the mechanism of social shame. The comparison of two autobiographical texts, Bernier's Diario and that of his groupmate, Ricardo Molina, allows us to discover the essential influence of André Gide's pederastic ethical proposal. Studying this intellectual and literary ascendancy as a tolerated device for negotiating desire towards ephebes is an essential chapter of the contemporary homosexual archive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholarship on the Manchukuo Film Association (Manying) has largely attended to documentaries, newsreels, and live-action films featuring Li Xianglan, neglecting animation. This article examines the animated film-making activities of the North China Film Company, a branch of Manying located in wartime Peking, by focusing on Chinese animator Liang Jin and a few Japanese animators such as Asada Isamu and Onozawa Wataru. With an animated filmmaking philosophy of territorialization and localization, Manying nonetheless created a de-territorialized world that enabled it to live multiple afterlives in socialist cinema, despite the institutional efforts to erase it from the history of Chinese cinema. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Computer Sciences Institute is the property of Lublin University of Technology and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Diálogo com a Economia Criativa is the property of Dialogo com a Economia Criativa and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Working in the animation industry today typically necessitates using digital tools, occupying seats on a software subscription service provided by the studio, but not all animators employ these tools exclusively. Analyzing interviews with animators who fell in love with drawing or sculpture before finding a career in animation, this study explores how and why they persist in an industry that seems to alienate as much as it enchants. While many find digital tools vital to their own work, the pressure to keep up with a diversifying array of software is made all the more difficult by myriad abstract interfaces composed of windows, icons, and pointers. The dominant strategy in the development of these digital tools remains oriented around optical interfaces, but animators improvise tactile tactics around and within the studio’s systems. The tactility of traditional tools enables creative processes, and demonstrating mastery is vital for cultivating a reputation as a creative. On the other hand, demonstrating technical and professional expertise with digital tools is critical. In a career where contracts tend to be short-term and moving between studios is frequent, animators must mobilize their education, portfolio, and reputation to demonstrate both professionalism and creativity. Analyzing interviews with thirty animators based in Atlanta, Georgia, this study argues animators enjoy the autonomy to incorporate the traditional and tactile into the otherwise purely digital pipeline and do so in surprising ways, suggesting that these skills have adapted to the cultural expectations of what it means to be a creative professional. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Industrial Relations / Relations Industrielles is the property of Universite Laval, Department of Industrial Relations and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Since the arrival of Godzilla (1954), the science-fiction genre of tokusatsu started booming its monsters by adapting different DIY techniques. The post-war period defined a collaborative effort between artists who worked within limited creative conditions due to economic restraints. They experimented with unusual materials for making monsters and image techniques to create visual effects on the filmed screen. Sculptors, art students, freelance workers and animators started collaborating to discover ways to produce suitmation and strategies to make the monster seem alive. Specifically, in Toho Studios, the Special Effects Department, directed by Tsuburaya Eiji, helped create a generation of monster-making specialists that spread to other studios. Along with Iizuka Sadao, they produced special effects using the animation stand and animation-related techniques, such as optical composition, to create the monster zigzag gleaming rays that became the staple of tokusatsu monsters. The analogue era of monster-making only starts to change from the Heisei Gamera series (1995–2006), where analogue and digital intertwine and culminate in Shin Godzilla (2016). This article investigates the possibilities of monster creation and adaptation and how this challenge created a space for hybrid images in the contemporary Japanese media landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

the objective of this article is to understand, from below, the practices of a profession focused on others which is still little studied: socio-cultural animation. From data collected by direct observation during a field survey, the text examines a particular case by its mode of organization set up within a vacation stay: a pedagogy of freedom. It discusses the disruption to the core of socio-cultural animators' profession, which relies on face-to-face pedagogical situations, before describing the construction of a relationship of contiguity with child-initiated commitments. Thus, it addresses another relational configuration which reinterprets the animation professionals' educational relationship to the children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the modern challenges facing society is finding ways to counteract hypodynamia. This article discusses the ability of educational institutions to enrich the forms and means of extracurricular physical activity through sports-animation practice, in order to stimulate the active participation of adolescents and increase the volume of their motor activity. Presented is the regulatory conditioning for the formation of professional-pedagogical competence for the realization of sports-animation activity. The authors justify the fact that maximising the engagement of the free time of the younger generation will regressively affect its activities with negative health dependencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When the "Animation Council of the Philippines (ACPI)" joined forces with the "Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA)" and "Iloilo Science and Technology University", formerly "Western Visayas College of Science and Technology (WVCT)", to promote technical and vocational (Tech-Voc) education after the 2007 introduction of the 2D Assistant animation program, five batches of applicants totalling more than 100 people, were recruited. What happened to them now that they had completed the animation program? Now, where are they? Do they now work in the targeted animation sector or hold another position? Setting up this tracer aims to track animators' whereabouts, career paths, and employment in a given sector. The data from this study will help technical schools and tertiary institutions improve their curricula and skills in pursuing nationally and internationally competitive and high-quality graduates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kanada Yoshinori is considered one of the most important animators in anime history. He turned the constraints imposed by anime’s “limited animation” techniques on their head thanks to his unique approach to drawing and timing on works such as Invincible Super Man Zambot 3 (Muteki Chôjin Zambot 3, 1977) or Galaxy Express 999 (Ginga Tetsudô 999, 1979). This paper aims to consider Kanada’s place and importance in anime history by reevaluating the role of animated movement in aesthetic and media analysis. Tom Gunning’s concept of “potential movement” serves as a basis to understand how animation works—how it is created and how it functions—and two of its central parameters, “rhythm” and “tension.” These are then used to explain the appeal of Kanada’s animation in aesthetic terms and its transmedia success in the environment of the “anime boom” of the 1970s and 1980s. Aesthetic and technical parameters can then become tools to explain the success and spreadability of certain trends and styles over anime history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Espacio, Tiempo y Forma. Serie VII, Historia del Arte is the property of Editorial UNED and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Many disciplines have adopted component-based principles to avail themselves of the many advantages they bring, especially component reusability. In a short time, the component-based architecture became a renown branch in the IT world and the center of interest of many researchers. Much work has been conducted in this context for the verification of component-based applications (CBAs). However, the main focus has been on the structural aspect of such compositions, while the behavioral aspect has seldom been dealt with. In this paper, our goal is to close this gap and propose a formal approach to verify the behavioral correctness of CBAs. We first define a set of requirements to be satisfied by the structure and the behavior of a CBA, represented by a set of interactions that may occur between their components. Then, we build a formal Event-B model to represent these requirements in a rigorous and non-ambiguous way. The use of the Event-B refinement technique allows us to master the complexity of CBAs by introducing their elements in an incremental manner. The correctness of the development is ensured by establishing a set of proof obligations, under the Rodin platform, and also by animating it with the ProB animator/model checker. The approach is illustrated by a running example. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The animation sector is becoming increasingly vital to India’s economic development, where attracting and retaining talent has become a top priority for studios operating in India. The animation industry operates on the same old capitalist premise—cut production costs by recruiting fewer regular and more irregular employees. Animators often move to wherever they find work, adding to the feeling of displacement and resentment. This paper reviews how the compensation practices in the animation industry in India impact the retention of artists and offers suggestions for improving workforce retention, which is currently at 25.6% for animators and 22.3% for 3D artists, with the turnover rates more than double the global average. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The figure of Augusta Ghidiglia Quintavalle, the art historian who played such an important role in the study, valorisation, conservation and protection of Emilian works of art between the early 1950s and the 1970s, has still been investigated too marginally in the current state of studies. A superintendency official, superintendent, and ordinator of public galleries such as the Estense in Modena or the Nazionale in Parma, Ghidiglia Quintavalle was, starting from those same years, the animator and promoter of numerous restorations and conservation actions, specifically regarding the immense and precious heritage of mural paintings that she had the privilege of governing for several decades. Sites that favoured the discovery of unpublished works and the staging of temporary exhibitions that, critically, were part of what is referred to in restoration history manuals as the "season of the detachments" and the "hunt" for sinopie. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]