Traditional manga (comic) and anime (cartoon) creation are painstaking processes. Even computers are utilized for the content creation, computers are mainly utilized as a naive digital canvas. With the increasing computing power and decreasing cost of CPU & GPU, more computing resource can be exploited cost-effectively for intelligent and semi-automatic creation of aesthetics content.

In this course, we gather speeches from both artist and scientists. We shall discuss what kind of computer technologies an artist would prefer to use in their creation (i.e. user point of view), and recent technologies developed in graphics that facilitates or even inspires the content creation.

Level

Intermediate

Intended Audience

Manga / comic artists, animators, researchers who are interested in computational manga and anime technologies.

Prerequisites

Basic knowledge manga and anime

Presenter(s)

Tien-Tsin Wong, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Takeo Igarashi, University of Tokyo
Ying-Qing Xu, Tsinghua University
Danqing Shi, Tsinghua University

Tien-Tsin Wong is a pioneer in computational manga and published several related works in SIGGRAPH. His work includes manga colorization (SIGGRAPH 2006), structure-aware halftoning (SIGGRAPH 2008), cartoon deringing (ACM TOG 2006), manga screening (SIGGRAPH Asia 2008), and stereoscopizing cel animation (SIGGRAPH Asia 2013). His goal is to develop intelligent technologies for raising productivity in manga/comic and anime production, instead of regarding the computer as a naive digital canvas. He received the IEEE Transactions on Multimedia Prize Paper Award 2005 and Young Researcher Award 2004.

Takeo Igarashi is also directing JST ERATO Igarashi Design Interface Project. He received Ph.D from department of information engineering, the University of Tokyo in March, 2000. His research interest is in user interface in general and current focus is on interaction techniques for 3D graphics. He is known as the inventor of Teddy (sketch-based 3D modeling) in graphics. He received ACM SIGGRAPH 2006 significant new researcher award. Visit http://www-ui.is.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~takeo for more info.

Before joining Tsinghua University in October 2011, Ying-Qing Xu was a lead researcher of Microsoft Research Asia (MSRA, Beijing China) where he had worked since January 1999, and a co-director of Microsoft Digital Cartoon and Animation Laboratory of Beijing Film Academy (2006-2011). Ying-Qing received his Sc.B from the Department of Mathematics of Jilin University (China), and his PhD from the Academia Since (Beijing, 1997). He has co-authored over 70 papers in computer graphics, and has had over 20 granted and more pending US patents. His research interests are in natural user interface design, computer graphics and computer vision, e-Heritage, and virtual reality. His memberships include: ACM, ACM SIGGRAPH, CAA (Chinese Artists Association), CCF (China Computer Federation), and IEEE. In 2012, he has also received the Outstanding Award from Chinagraph. He was an Art Gallery Chair of SIGGRAPH Asia 2012.

As a digital media artist, Danqing Shi’s trajectory started from experimental films. During his undergraduate study in Central Academy of Fine Art (China), he integrated his architectural and literary interests into cinematic expressions. In 2009, he received his master degree from Rhode Island School of Design (USA), Digital+Media Dept. where he expanded his exploration to programming and interactive art. He developed series of networking games as platforms of generative storytelling. After the graduation, he taught at RISD in the joined course between Digital+Media Dept. and Architecture Dept. on the subject of “Self-organized Urbanism” which explored varies digital media influences in urban design. In 2010, Danqing Shi moved to Berlin and worked as a computational designer in ART+COM AG. He designed and implemented many interactive experience spaces for high-profile clients. Through those commercial projects , he was interested in organically merging interactive technologies with architectural space. Danqing Shi returned to China in 2012, and started lecturing at Tsinghua University (Beijing China), Academy of Arts & Design and conducting interdisciplinary program combining the academic resources from both the art and science fields. In apparel with his teaching work, his papers were published on journals such as Leonardo and ACM Ubicom 2011. He also juried in many international conferences, such as Siggraph Asia 2012, and ACE (International Conference on Advances in Computer Entertainment Technology).