Video Paintbox: The fine art of video painting

We present the Video Paintbox; a novel system capable of transforming video into stylised animations. Our system solves the problem of temporally coherent painting for a wide class of video, and is able to introduce cartoon-like motion emphasis cues. Coherent painting in video is a long-standing problem that is associated with the difficulties in placing, orienting, and sizing paint strokes over time. Our solution allows removal of stroke flicker, allowing animators control over any stylisation and incoherence they might care to reintroduce. Furthermore, the animator can choose to selectively paint certain objects, leaving photorealistic video elsewhere. Many common motion cues used by animators, such as streak-lines, squash-and-stretch, and anticipated movement may be integrated with either real or painted footage. The motion cues depend on a robust analysis of video that allows for effects such as camera motion and occlusion, and which is able to automatically build articulated dolls complete with kinematic properties. We describe our Video Paintbox, discuss animator controls, and illustrate with examples.