ETA: Superhero Week is now over. The links for the secret demos can still be found inside my Updates on Twitter.

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Here’s the before clip used to produce the following demos. I found it at iStockVideo. BTW, I downsampled the frame rate in the clip to 12 fps before applying any of the effects. Several professional animators and animation instructors, along with Jim Tierney of Digital Anarchy, suggested to me that this makes animated looks more convincing.

Here’s our rototoon effect. It’s not exactly new, but I’m including it as a point of comparison and because it’s cool to look at.

This first new effect is called Airbrush. It’s smooth and glossy with rich darks and has a machinima feel. It works well for horror/suspense content and many music videos.

This is our Smooth Paint effect. It generates individual frames that resemble intentionally realistic gouache paintings without visible brush strokes, similar to the artwork of Alex Ross in the graphic novel Kingdom Come.

This effect we call Rough Paint. It has more of an oil paint feel of raised brush strokes.

This is our new Paint Splotch effect. It’s looser and more expressionistic, somewhat reminiscent of Van Gogh. Unlike other research paint effects described in the non-photorealistic rendering literature that have applied irregular color blobs to simulate a painterly appearance in standalone images, our effect also translates well to video.

This effect is called Woodcut. It’s a stark black and white look with thick outlines transitioning to deep shadows and has a strong graphic design feel, similar to Frank Miller’s artwork in the Sin City graphic novels. This effect can be recreated offline by ToonIt! through the proper combination of comic and shadow outlines.

Instead of white, new ToonIt! allows users to set outline background to any color. This is a cool and compelling variation in which background color is randomized and changes frame-to-frame.

The same color randomization applies equally well to foreground outline color for an especially trippy look. Yellow Submarine anyone?

Last but not least is Heat Vision. There are somewhat similar looks available on the web, but this version has been engineered for high temporal coherence. This means that output color distribution is relatively stable across frames and images, which makes the effect look significantly better in video and improves appearance overall.

Thanks for stopping by. If you like these, please let us know or pass the link along. We’re also always open to hearing suggestions for new effects.

Technorati Tags: Toonamation, rototooning, rotopainting, rototoon, rotopaint, toon, plugin, TonIt!, ToonIt, painted, painting, painterly, paint, non-photorealistic rendering, computer graphics, automatic painting, heat vision, woodcut, paint splotch, splotch, paint effect, painterly effect, painted effect, comic book effect, cartoon effect, painted look, comic book look, graphic novel look, airbrush, airbrushed look, video effect, image manipulation, image processing, Van Gogh effect, Van Gogh look, gouache effect, expressionistic effect, Yellow Submarine, Yellow Submarine look, Sin City, Sin City look

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At the closing session of PodCamp Philly I offered to apply this effect for free, plus rototooning, to photos people took of the event. If interested, go here for more info. Also, here’s a link to my Flickr page, where you can see more examples of PodCamp Philly toons.

Technorati Tags: Toonamation, rototooning, rotopainting, toon, plugin, ToonIt!, Flickr, painted, painting, PodCamp Philly, Adobe, Photoshop, non-photorealistic rendering, computer graphics, automatic painting

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.

FYI, I rendered the ComicCon toon video with a software testbed that I experiment with to create new effects. So I didn’t exactly use ToonIt!, but the effects and settings I used are all currently available there, meaning anyone with ToonIt! could have done the same thing.

Technorati Tags: Steve Garfield, Vlog Soup, rotoscoping, rototooning, automatic cartoon, toon, plugin, cartoon, comics, non-photorealistic rendering, computer graphics, Toonamation, ToonIt!, picture video, ComicCon 2007, animation

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Technorati Tags: NPAR 2007, bilateral filtering, Siggraph, outline drawing, Henry Kang, Seungyong Lee, non-photorealistic rendering, computer graphics, Toonamation, ToonIt!

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into this:

using the default comic setting.

Texas artist Kevin Cherry liked the Lichtenstein look of my toon and in turn integrated it into a hand-assembled mixed media collage:

.

Photograph of the real to artistic digital manipulation to art in the real. Very cool!!!

Technorati Tags: rotoscoping, rototooning, automatic cartoon, toon, plugin, cartoon, comics, non-photorealistic rendering, computer graphics, Toonamation, ToonIt!, Flickr, Pop Art, Lichtenstein

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It was adapted from an original picture video by Lan Bui with his kind permission.

Technorati Tags: rotoscoping, rototooning, automatic cartoon, toon, plugin, cartoon, comics, non-photorealistic rendering, computer graphics, Toonamation, ToonIt!, picture video, ComicCon 2007, animation

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In case you were wondering why some photos weren’t chosen, selection was a bit arbitrary, but we ended up concentrating more on photos where faces were visible and where there was some contrast for our algorithms to play with, especially across the faces. I think this made for toons that were more interesting aesthetically. I’m including several representative ones I liked below, though I had many other favorites. These all happen to be landscape orientation, just because that displays better here. Also, if you liked our toons and are using them on your blogs or passing them around, let us know. Thanks.

Technorati Tags: Toonamation, rototooning, toon, Toonerstan, Toonerlisa, BlogPhilly, BlogPhiladelphia, Flickr

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