Interactive shadow design tool for cartoon animation -KAGEZOU-

Abstract

In traditional 2D Anime, shadows are drawn by hand, and play a significant role in the creation of symbolic visual effects related to the character’s position and shape. However shadows are not always drawn as a result of time constraints and a lack of animators. We develop a shadow generation system that enables animators to easily create shadow animation layers based on character outlines. Our system is both simple and intuitive. The only inputs required are the character animation layers generally used in the Anime industry. Shadows are automatically generated based on these inputs, and then generated shadows are fine-tuned by simple mouse operations. First, shadows are rendered using Shadow Map Method based on the transparency information of the character animation layers. Subsequently, our system applies some filters that enable the generated shadow shape to convert into the effective shadow shape such as the elliptical shape or the wavy shape. Through these processes, our system enables animators to create simple Anime-like shadow animation easily and in a short time.