Sketch-Based Skeleton-Driven 2D Animation and Motion Capture

We present a novel sketch-based 2D animation technique, which allows the user to produce 2D character animations efficiently. It consists of two parts, sketch-based skeleton-driven 2D animation production and 2D motion capture. The user inputs one image of the character and sketches the skeleton for each subsequent frame. The system deforms the character and creates animations automatically. To perform 2D shape deformation, a variable-length needle model is introduced to divide the deformation into two stages: skeleton driven deformation and nonlinear deformation in joint areas. It preserves the local geometric features and global area. Compared with existing approaches, it reduces the computation complexity and produces plausible results. Because our technique is skeleton-driven, the motion of character can be captured by tracking joints position and retargeted to a new character. This facilitates the reuse of motion characteristics contained in existing moving images, making the cartoon generation easy for artists and novices alike.