Anime/Manga Technology

[AnimeFan188]

Henjo's Twitter Lets Users Automatically Generate 4-Panel Manga:

"In order to participate, people must reply to the announcement tweet with "four panel"
in Japanese, plus a theme listed in parentheses that they want the bot to use to make
the manga. The theme can be a maximum of eight characters in Japanese. A bot then
uses panels from Konogi's manga, inserts new text, and replies with the manga itself.
The announcement also states that more characters will debut as people retweet the
campaign."

See:

https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/int...-manga/.128071

[AnimeFan188]

Digital Manga Volume Sales Overtake Print Manga Volume
Sales in Japan for 1st Time:

"Reports by both The Huffington Post on Monday and the NHK World on Tuesday noted
that annual sales of digital manga volume sales overtook sales of physical manga
volumes for the first time in 2017. The reports, citing the Research Institute for
Publications, noted that total sales of physical compiled manga book volumes were
166.6 billion yen (about US$1.56 billion) — down 14.4% compared to the previous year.
This drop is the highest since sales were first tabulated in 1978. Meanwhile, digital
volume sales rose to 171.1 billion yen (about US$1.6 billion) — up 17% compared to the
previous year. These figures do not include magazine sales."

See:

https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/new...t-time/.128360

[AnimeFan188]

This article has more to do with American animation than Japanese Anime, but
the technology being discussed doubtless has an effect on the other side of the
Pacific as well.


Between Cintiq and streaming, animation is thriving—ask
Titmouse’s Chris Prynoski:

""The fundamentals of animation haven't changed a lot. When I started, you were
drawing on pieces of paper; people were using computers to scan but colored in ink
and paint," Prynoski says. "Before my time, it was the big ol' Oxberry cameras. But it
pretty quickly got taken over by computers. Now, hardly anybody uses pieces of
paper... Anything we do starts on [Wacom] Cintiqs, which are basically big computer
screens you can draw on. But the main thing is still that artistic skill you have to
develop—whether it's on a piece of paper or computer screen—which has stayed
pretty similar."

Even if the core skill of his industry hasn't changed, Prynoski readily acknowledges
tech has made today a great time to be in animation. For starters, unlike the
expensive equipment required to turn pen strokes into full productions in the past, the
barriers to entry for young, DIY animators have lowered.

"There [are] no shortcuts for becoming a better writer or better artist, but the tools
are a lot cheaper," he says. "It used to cost tens of thousands to get the gear you
need to make a cartoon. But now you can probably use your cell phone or a tablet for
everything and spend $500, maybe a little more if you want to be fancy."

See:

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/...hris-prynoski/

[AnimeFan188]

Dwango Unveils Anime-Drawing Assistant AI With
Sibling Mascot Characters:

"Dwango revealed on Tuesday that part of the production of the FLCL Progressive film
and CalorieMate's "Susume, Karolina" commercial use an animation production
assistance technique from the company's machine-learning technique division Dwango
Media Village. The company is calling the technique an "assistant" that can help users
streamline the "animation processes of anime production."

Dwango also unveiled the "Tokigahara siblings" anthropomorphizations that represent
the two functions of the new assistant. The character duo consists of the sister Umeru
Tokigahara and the brother Utsusu Tokigahara. "Nazo no Anime-dan" (Mystery Anime
Group) is credited with their character designs. A Twitter account for the pair also
launched on Tuesday.

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) in various industries has been spreading in recent
years, and Dwango has been researching and developing AI techniques that can
support animators' work. As part of that aim, the new AI can assist with the
inbetweening and keyframe-tracing parts of the anime production process."

See:

https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/int...acters/.137288

[AnimeFan188]

Animators, Researchers Develop Automated Technique
for Coloring Anime:

"Japanese animation production companies Imagica Group and OLM Digital have
joined forces with the Nara Institute of Science and Technology (NAIST) to develop a
technique for automatic coloring within anime production.

Imagica Group is a production company that specializes in video production duties,
including filming, dubbing, editing, restoration, and streaming. One of their subsidiary
groups is Oriental Light and Magic (OLM), the production studio of the Pokémon
anime. The OLM group specializes in both 2D and 3D animation, as well as visual
effects.

The coloring technique developed by the researchers is based on recent advances of
machine-based deep learning. The researchers developed a color script to correspond
with the different segments of an image, which is then applied by an algorithm
capable of machine learning. These techniques have been applied widely in various
fields, such as coloring black-and-white photos, although the researchers claim to be
the first to develop a technique for automatic coloring in Japanese anime production in
particular."

See:

https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/int...-anime/.140131

[AnimeFan188]

AniCast Lab Releases English-subtitled Video Introducing
Tool For Creating VR Anime:

"Entertainment company Avex and virtual reality development company XVI Inc.
announced last year that they are creating a tool titled AniCast Lab., which will allow
users to create VR anime, such as virtual YouTubers, using XVI's AniCast software and
share it.

AniCast Lab posted an introduction video to the tool last Wednesday with closed-caption
English, Japanese, and Chinese subtitles. The video emphasizes the tool's user
friendliness and capacity for allowing users to create VR anime by themselves. The
project aims to allow for the production of anime at relatively low cost in terms of money
and manpower, and by doing so establish new ways of creating anime."

See:

https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/int...-anime/.151588

YouTube

https://youtu.be/prg4NU41bxQ

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[AnimeFan188]

DreamWorks Animation will open source its MoonRay renderer later this year

"DreamWorks has been open sourcing some of its technology in recent years, and now its animation division is preparing to make more tools freely available. DreamWorks Animation said it will release its MoonRay ray-tracing renderer as open-source software later this year. As The Hollywood Reporter notes, DreamWorks will offer up its Arras cloud rendering framework in the code base too.

“We are thrilled to share with the industry over 10 years of innovation and development on MoonRay’s vectorized, threaded, parallel and distributed code base,” Andrew Pearce, DreamWorks vice president of global technology said in a statement. “The appetite for rendering at scale grows each year, and MoonRay is set to meet that need. We expect to see the code base grow stronger with community involvement as DreamWorks continues to demonstrate our commitment to open source.""

See:

https://www.engadget.com/dreamworks-...191328980.html

[AnimeFan188]

Stable Diffusion and Midjourney can even understand “kawaii.”
Anime-style characters created by AI image generators

"Another thing that should be highlighted is the incredibly high precision with which Stable Diffusion can create anime style illustrations. These kinds of images, too, are already being shared on the internet."

See:

https://automaton-media.com/en/news/20220825-15224/

[AnimeFan188]

Motion capture on the cheap:


Sony's Mocopi Can Turn You Into an Anime Girl With Just
Six Small Sensors and a Smartphone

"Starting early next year, Sony plans to capitalize on the rise in popularity of
VTubers—virtual YouTube (and sometimes Twitch) celebrities—and our slow
but steady transition to a life spent entirely in VR. The company will be
introducing a new and relatively affordable motion capture system that relies
on just six sensors strapped to the body and a smartphone capturing all of
the tracked motion data.

Computer-generated characters appearing in movies, TV, and video games
were once all animated by hand; a time-consuming and expensive process
that can result in a human character’s movements looking less than realistic
(which, fair, isn’t always the goal). Motion capture helped solve that problem
by capturing the nuanced movements of human performers and translating
their movements to virtual characters, right down to facial expressions and
even the movements of the eyes. Now, it seems we’re taking the steps to do
it live."

See:

https://gizmodo.com/sony-mocopi-full...ual-1849831283

[AnimeFan188]

Shinchosha Publishes AI-Drawn Manga

"AI art may be controversial in the art world, having been banned on prominent
platforms like Skeb, but one manga publisher is interested in exploring its potential. The
Cyberpunk Momotarō manga is one such example; it is created with the Midjourney AI
art software. Shinchosha's Bunch Comics imprint will publish the full-color manga on
March 9."

See:

https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/int...-manga/.193569

[AnimeFan188]

Netflix's 'Dog and Boy' anime causes outrage for incorporating
AI-generated art

"This week, Netflix shared Dog and Boy, an animated short the streaming giant
described as an “experimental effort” to address the anime industry’s ongoing labor
shortage. “We used image generation technology for the background images of all three-
minute video cuts,” said Netflix Japan of the project on Twitter, according to a machine
translation. The short is touching but was immediately controversial. As Motherboard
points out, many Twitter users accused Netflix of using AI to avoid paying human
artists."

See:

https://www.engadget.com/netflixs-do...203035524.html

[AnimeFan188]

The future of Manga and comics?


How to create your own comic books with AI

"You've dreamed of becoming a comic book artist but you lack one
important skill, namely the ability to draw. Well, now AI can fulfill
those dreams for you. Available as a space through Hugging
Factory, the AI Comic Factory will design comic book pages for you
based on your descriptions."

See:

https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-to...books-with-ai/