PicToon: a personalized image-based cartoon system

In this paper, we present PicToon, a cartoon system which can generate a personalized cartoon face from an input Picture. PicToon is easy to use and requires little user interaction. Our system consists of three major components: an image-based Cartoon Generator, an interactive Cartoon Editor for exaggeration, and a speech-driven Cartoon Animator. First, to capture an artistic style, the cartoon generation is decoupled into two processes: sketch generation and stroke rendering. An example-based approach is taken to automatically generate sketch lines which depict the facial structure. An inhomogeneous non-parametric sampling plus a flexible facial template is employed to extract the vector-based facial sketch. Various styles of strokes can then be applied. Second, with the pre-designed templates in Cartoon Editor, the user can easily make the cartoon exaggerated or more expressive. Third, a real-time lip-syncing algorithm is also developed that recovers a statistical audio-visual mapping between the character's voice and the corresponding lip configuration. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our system.

[1]  Timothy F. Cootes,et al.  Constrained active appearance models , 2001, Proceedings Eighth IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision. ICCV 2001.

[2]  Rosalind W. Picard,et al.  Color halftoning with M-lattice , 1995, Proceedings., International Conference on Image Processing.

[3]  José María Parramón.  How to Draw the Human Figure , 1990 .

[4]  Thoms M. Levergood,et al.  DEC face: an automatic lip-synchronization algorithm for synthetic faces , 1993 .

[5]  Siu Chi Hsu,et al.  Drawing and animation using skeletal strokes , 1994, SIGGRAPH.

[6]  F. Van Reeth.  Integrating 2 1/2 -D computer animation techniques for supporting traditional animation , 1996, Proceedings Computer Animation '96.

[7]  Timothy F. Cootes,et al.  Statistical models of appearance for computer vision , 1999 .

[8]  Kiyoharu Aizawa,et al.  An intelligent facial image coding driven by speech and phoneme , 1989, International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing,.

[9]  Matthew Brand,et al.  Voice puppetry , 1999, SIGGRAPH.

[10]  Peter Litwinowicz,et al.  Inkwell: A 2-D animation system , 1991, SIGGRAPH.

[11]  Timothy F. Cootes,et al.  Active Appearance Models , 1998, ECCV.

[12]  David Salesin,et al.  Orientable textures for image-based pen-and-ink illustration , 1997, SIGGRAPH.

[13]  Han Noot,et al.  Animated CharToon faces , 2000, NPAR '00.

[14]  Christoph Bregler,et al.  Video Rewrite: Driving Visual Speech with Audio , 1997, SIGGRAPH.

[15]  Lee Markosian,et al.  Artistic silhouettes: a hybrid approach , 2000, NPAR '00.

[16]  Baining Guo,et al.  Chaos Mosaic: Fast and Memory Efficient Texture Synthesis , 2000 .

[17]  Betty Edwards,et al.  The new drawing on the right side of the brain workbook : guided practice in the five basic skills of drawing , 1979 .

[18]  Frédo Durand,et al.  Decoupling Strokes and High-Level Attributes for Interactive Traditional Drawing , 2001, Rendering Techniques.

[19]  Paul Haeberli,et al.  Paint by numbers: abstract image representations , 1990, SIGGRAPH.

[20]  Alexei A. Efros,et al.  Texture synthesis by non-parametric sampling , 1999, Proceedings of the Seventh IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision.

[21]  S. Griffis.  EDITOR , 1997, Journal of Navigation.

[22]  Biing-Hwang Juang,et al.  Fundamentals of speech recognition , 1993, Prentice Hall signal processing series.

[23]  Betty Edwards.  Drawing on the right side of the brain , 1981 .

[24]  Victor Ostromoukhov.  Digital facial engraving , 1999, SIGGRAPH '99.