• Cartoon and Animation Studies
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• s.36
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• pp.147-165
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• 2014

Around the turn of 21st century, there has been a major technological shift in the animation industry. With development of reality-based computer graphics, major American animation studios replaced hand-drawn method with the new 3D computer graphics. Traditional animation was known for its simplified shapes such as circles and triangle that makes characters' movements distinctive from non-animated feature films. Computer-generated animation has largely replaced it, but is under continuous criticism that automated movements and reality-like graphics devaluate the aesthetics of animation. Although hand-drawn animation is still produced, 3D computer graphics have taken commercial lead and there has been many changes to acting of animated characters, which calls for detailed investigation. Firstly, the changes in acting of 3D characters can be traced from looking at human-like rigging method that mimics humanistic moving mechanism. Also, if hair and clothing was part of hand-drawn characters' acting, it has now been hidden inside mathematical simulation of 3D graphics, leaving only the body to be used in acting. Secondly, looking at "Stretch and Squash" method, which represents the distinctive movements of animation, through the lens of media, a paradox arises. Hand-drawn animation are produced frame-by-frame, and a subtle change would make animated frames shiver. This slight shivering acts as an aesthetic distinction of animated feature films, but can also require exaggerated movements to hide the shivering. On the contrary, acting of 3D animation make use of calculated movements that may seem exaggerated compared to human acting, but seem much more moderate and static compared to hand-drawn acting. Moreover, 3D computer graphics add the third dimension that allows more intuitive movements - maybe animators no longer need fine drawing skills; what they now need is directing skills to animate characters in 3D space intuitively. On the assumption that technological advancement and change of artistic expressionism are inseparable, this paper compares acting of 3D animation studio Pixar and classical drawing studio Disney to investigate character acting style and movements.

• Archives of design research
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.327-336
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• 2004

The cultural production of meanings is becoming more and laden with the intricacies of signs and symbols in our times. The idea of 'character' is important as an intermediation for information and an essential characteristic of "the object" experienced through the sence of sight. Character is symbolicin its form but also in its iconic markings. Motion Picture Animation makes Character not just an expression of an image but visual communication that expands the action of meaning piled up, sign upon sign. The analysis of 'character' suggests that motion picture animated characters could play an important role as a cultural mode leading to new styles not merely as an aesthetic mechanism. The study there with analyzed animated character systematically to discem where the sign phenomena shows up in social conventions under the semiotic rigor of Peirce's concepts of icon, index, and symbol.

• Journal of the Korea Computer Graphics Society
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.85-92
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• 2019

A 3D virtual character playing a role in a digital story-telling has a unique style in its appearance and motion. Because the style reflects the unique personality of the character, it is very important to preserve the style and keep its consistency. However, when the character's motion is directly controlled by a user's motion who is wearing motion sensors, the unique style can be discarded. We present a novel character motion control method that uses only a small amount of animation data created only for the character to preserve the style of the character motion. Instead of machine learning approaches requiring a large amount of training data, we suggest a search-based method, which directly searches the most similar character pose from the animation data to the current user's pose. To show the usability of our method, we conducted our experiments with a character model and its animation data created by an expert designer for a virtual reality game. To prove that our method preserves well the original motion style of the character, we compared our result with the result obtained by using general human motion capture data. In addition, to show the scalability of our method, we presented experimental results with different numbers of motion sensors.

• Proceedings of the Korea Contents Association Conference
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• 2006.11a
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• pp.278-281
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• 2006

In the Contents industry, especially in the field of game contents the area receiving the most spotlight is 3D. With qualitative and quantitative developments in games continue, interest in 3D is becoming more significant. As a result studies and actual application in the area of 3D in the game industry are being most actively conducted. It is true that 3D game characters do not have the same level of natural movement compared to the previous 2D characters. In order to overcome the limitations of movement control of the Key frame method, the method that is currently being rapidly developed is a movement control method using motion capture system. In this study, the focus is placed in production of natural character animation through movement control through linkage of 3D game characters and motion capture system. Hence, production of natural 3D game character animation through a single central action was established as the purpose of this study.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.135-142
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• 2006

An animation character can be applied an Elasticity principle to strengthen an action and expression. That principle is called as Squash & Stretch in animation. The application of this principle gives the illusion of weight and volume to an animation character, and makes it possible that an animation action be the smooth and soft by escaping from the stiffness and rigidity. If an action of human or object on animation is expressed like a real world, it seems to be unnatural. Any action without Squash & Stretch will look rigid, uninteresting and not alive. It can be applied to movement of all objects, characters' actions, dialogues and facial expressions with a basic rule of mass, volume and gravity. Havier characters squash and stretch more than thinner ones. Any action will not be well expressed without this principle. To be a good animation movement, it should be widely applied in all type of animation, not only 2D animation.

• Cartoon and Animation Studies
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• s.37
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• pp.221-245
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• 2014

With the success of the world's first 3D computer animated film, "Toy Story" in 1995, industrial development of 3D computer animation gained considerable momentum. Consequently, various 3D animations for TV were produced; in addition, high quality 3D computer animation games became common. To save a large amount of 3D animation production time and cost, technological development has been conducted actively, in accordance with the expansion of industrial demand in this field. Further, compared with the traditional approach of producing animations through hand-drawings, the efficiency of producing 3D computer animations is infinitely greater. In this study, an experiment and a comparative analysis of markerless motion capture systems for facial expression animation has been conducted that aims to improve the efficiency of 3D computer animation production. Faceware system, which is a product of Image Metrics, provides sophisticated production tools despite the complexity of motion capture recognition and application process. Faceshift system, which is a product of same-named Faceshift, though relatively less sophisticated, provides applications for rapid real-time motion recognition. It is hoped that the results of the comparative analysis presented in this paper become baseline data for selecting the appropriate motion capture and key frame animation method for the most efficient production of facial expression animation in accordance with production time and cost, and the degree of sophistication and media in use, when creating animation.

• Cartoon and Animation Studies
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• s.16
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• pp.223-243
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• 2009

Computer graphic where the most useful and effective production methods are used for animation or films has expanded into actors' performance beyond object expression, background expression and special effect. Unlike 2D drawing software focusing on user's sense, 3D mainly depends on hardware performance and software functions. Therefore, for 3D users, learning 3D functions is directly related to new expression, and quick learning and effective representation are keys to productivity growth in animation industry. In line with industrial needs, basic 3D animation software training is provided in school. Unfortunately, however, many problems such as lack of professional instructors, time allocation and education environment prevent various 3D animation software from being taught. Moreover, functional use does not live up to industrial rapid trends. In order to improve effects of software functional education in restricted education fields, this research aims to find out what functions of 3D animation software are used in industries, what are those function used for, and how schools provide 3D animation software training.

• 한국HCI학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2008.02a
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• pp.409-413
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• 2008

최근, 3차원 그래픽스 기술은 애니메이션 필름 제작에 있어서 자주 사용된다. 그러나 많은 애니메이션 필름들은 3차원 그래픽스 기술을 사용하여 제작되더라도, 2차원 셀 애니메이션 효과를 내려고 한다. 3차원 그래픽스 기술을 이용하여 2차원 셀 애니메이션의 효과를 내기 위해서는 렌더링에는 카툰 렌더링이 사용 된다. 그러나 이를 제외하고도 몇 가기 기술이 더 필요한데, 그중 하나가 만화 캐릭터(character)의 만화스러운 움직임이다. 기존의 연구 중에는 기존의 모션을 만화적 모션으로 변형하려는 시도가 있었으나, 셀 애니메이션의 캐릭터 움직임과 차이가 있었다. 또 생성된 모션이 만화적 모션인가 하는 의문에 대한 평가 기준이 없기 때문에, 만화적 모션의 모호성 문제가 발생하였다. 본 논문에서는 직접 애니메이션에서 모션을 얻어내는 시스템을 제안한다. 2차원 애니메이션 동영상에서 2차원 캐릭터의 자세를 보고 3차원 캐릭터의 자세로 반자동 맵핑하여, 3차원 캐릭터의 애니메이션 키 프레임을 생성하고, 이 키 프레임간의 보간을 통해 3차원 캐릭터 애니메이션을 생성한다. 생성된 3차원 캐릭터 애니메이션은 만화적 움직임을 갖게 되며, 2차원 캐릭터의 자세와 움직임을 기준으로 만들었기 때문에, 만화적 모호성을 극복할 수 있다.

• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
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• 2002.06c
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• pp.223-226
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• 2002

If one can easily modify the existing motion data to a new motion in making an animation movie, he can save a lot of time for graphic design. To implement this kind of system, we propose a PC-based system composed of low cost commercial animation tool (3D Studio Max) for visualization of the animation and motion editing module that handles optimization process during the motion transform. Researchers studying advanced motion transform techniques only have to focus on the mathematical manipulation of the motion data

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.12 no.7
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• pp.1193-1201
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• 2008

In this paper, we propose a automated techniques for generating the gait animation of humanoid character model required in game applications. The proposed method can generate motion data of various styles with intuitive manipulation, and techniques for editing motion data are also proposed. In addition, we introduce an automated tool for gait animation of character model developed with the proposed method to verify the effectiveness of our method. The proposed method tan be successfully employed in motion authoring tools. In this paper, only the gait animation was considered. However, the proposed method can be applied to various motions and can be utilized as a motion engine that automatically generates proper motion according to the state of the character. The motion engine can express various behavior of the character without requiring motion data base which is usually employed in 3D online games.