Summary
In visual expression, staging that effectively guides the viewer’s cognition plays an important role. In this respect, hand-drawn animation exhibits uniquely stylized modes of expression. In particular, techniques that precisely control the level of detail within an image are considered, in this study, to be important for producing visual effects such as exaggerated depth perception and the emphasis of specific objects. However, the design of such levels of detail largely depends on creators’ experience-based heuristics and tacit knowledge, and research and discussion on this topic remain insufficient. Therefore, this study clarifies the design process and aims to construct an interactive computational model that parametrically controls the stylized level of detail observed in animation.
In this study, among the factors influencing level-of-detail control in hand-drawn animation, we focus on the following three elements, as illustrated in Figure 1: (a) global factors determined by the distance from the viewpoint, (b) local factors determined by the depth structure of each object, and (c) the importance of each object. In particular, factor (c) represents the degree of attention assigned to an object, such as a main character or a background character; it is global in that it is determined by relationships among multiple objects, while also being local in that it constitutes information intrinsic to each object. Taking these three elements into account, we construct a framework consisting of two stages: a control process that determines the distribution of levels of detail across the image, and a rendering process that produces the final image by reducing the level of detail of the original image according to this distribution.
Figure 1. Factors influencing level-of-detail control addressed in this study
Figure 2. Results using the proposed method.
Members
| Name | Affiliation | Web site |
|---|---|---|
 Masahiro Aono | Keio University | |
| Tsukasa Fukusato | Waseda University |
Publications
Presentation
Refereed
- Masahiro Aono, Tsukasa Fukusato, Issei Fujishiro：”Anime-Stylized LOD Control: A Proposal for an Interactive Computational Model Toward Exaggerated Expressions,” in Proceedings of NICOGRAPH 2025, pp. S-14:1–S-14:4, Hiroshima Satellite Campus University, Hirosima, December 2, 2025 (in Japanese).
Unrefereed
- Masahiro Aono，Issei Fujishiro：”Proposal of an LOD control model toward anime production”，in Proceedings of Expressive Japan 2025 (The Institute of Image Information and Television Engineers Technical Report, Vol. 49, No. 10, pp.377-380, AIT2025-146), Tokyo Polytechnic University, March 10, 2025, Excellent Poster Awards, StudioGOONEYS Awards (in Japanese).
- Masahiro Aono, Issei Fujishiro: “Proposal of an LOD control model for anime production,” in Proceedings of the 87th National Convention of International Processing Society of Japan, Vol. 2, pp. 503―504 (6S-07), The University of Ritsumeikan, March 15, 2025, Student encouragement awards (in Japanese).
Grants
Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Research (Exploratory): 23K18468 (2023-)