2D Cartoon Character Deformation by Sketch Skeleton

Because setting character key poses in animation is time-consuming, most work today are done in solving this problem. Representing the character pose by skeleton that has the joints and bone information is very intuitive, the sketch operation is very simple in interface and interactive mode. So, we present a novel 2D Cartoon character deformation method combining skeleton with sketch: First user sketch several key poses using of skeleton that indicate the moving sequence. Then sketch the object character´s skeleton corresponding to the origin skeleton that means they are topological isomorphism. Finally, we get the characters animation sequence by using deformation algorithm in terms of the least squares. Most important thing is deformation algorithm, the algorithm aims to preserve shape properties, that is deformations should be as rigid as possible. We use least squares to solve the deformation function. From the laboratory experiment, the system is not only easy to operate but also can implement character exaggerative deformations, which can be performed in real-time. Specially, the key pose implying from skeleton can retarget different objects.