THE COST OF ANIMATION
Animation is traditionally a long, slow process. An average
feature length animated picture requires some 460,000 drawings.
Including inspirational sketches, storyboard drawings, layouts
etc etc. the grand total is likely between one and two million
drawings. Producing traditionally animated feature films require
large staffs, large budgets and a lot of time.
GENIMATOR
GeniMator is a new, revolutionizing computer method for animation,
offering a 75% saving in time and staff. It's the first tool for
drawn characters to apply real-time "rotoscoping",
producing character animation from human acting, preserving the
qualities and characteristics of the original cartoon artwork.
GeniMator requires two sets of information - a library of
vectorized linedrawings of the character to be animated, and the
sequence of movements the character is to perform.
THE CARTOON LIBRARY
As opposed to 3-D software and CAD-based animation packages,
GeniMator does not model and render animated characters. The
cartoon characters are drawn by artists in sequential positions
for each of its body segments. The drawings are then stored in a
vectorized form in a computer memory, each 'toon limb thus
representing 360 degrees of perspective. A complete library for
one cartoon character is made up of no more than 1000 drawings.
In traditional animation, this number of drawings would produce
less than 83 seconds animation, at 12 frames drawn for each
second.
MOVEMENT
The motion of a live actor is registered and the data generated
will retrieve all the 'toon segments by their corresponding
position and have them reassembled to fully copy the performance
of the actor.
Since the live action is captured as 3-D data, the cartoon
character can be generated from any perspective, and at different
speeds.
Any configuration of cartoon
segments can be used to create different characters. Motion data
from the actors' legs could for example generate life for a horse,
or a centipede. A flock of birds, or a parade of elephants could
be generated similarly, from the captured motion of one single
actor.
ANIMATION EFFECTS
As the 'toon archives consist of vectorized drawings, the graphic
output can be manipulated for traditional animation effects. Many
types of performance control is made possible. For instance, to
emphasize a fat mans' bouncy walk, motion along the vertical axis
can be mapped to continuously alter the vertical scaling of the
figure = squash & stretch. Since all motion data is in
digital form, a variety of conditions are possible to define for
the final dynamics and behaviour of the toon.
For the director/producer of an
animated film, GeniMator will be more like traditional
filmproduction in the sense that 'toons could now be directed, in
real time.
The actors' performance can be monitored and evaluated in real
time, and once the director is satisfied with the performance for
the scene, a low-res version of the cartoon can be viewed. The
final result will then be produced after chosing "camera
angle", linetexture (crayon, ink, etc), coloring, shading
and possible cast-shadow to be projected.
GeniMator is patented worldwide.
For full information on GeniMator, please visit our main website: http://www.genimator.com/
For full patent information please visit: http://www.freepatentsonline.com/