Non-photorealistic rendering of twentieth-century cartoonists' expressiveness in 3D real-time

• Main Author: Xu, Peisen
• Other Authors: Andrea Nanetti
• Format: Thesis-Master by Research
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2023
• Subjects: Visual arts and music::Animation::3D
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/169532
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Al Hirschfeld (1903-2003) is one of the foremost representatives of a great generation of cartoon line artists. He extensively drew the American popular culture of the whole 20th century at its peak of liveliness and pushed beyond the conventional and commercial cartoon art with his exclusive focus on the minimalistic and expressive usage of pen-and-ink lines. His works uniquely stand out as part of a larger group of 20th-century cartoonists whose economy of graphic lines frequently inspired traditional 2D animators, such as Ronald Searle (1920-2011) and Gerald Scarfe (1936-). However, the expressiveness of their line style has not been fully exploited in 3D real-time. We observe a lack of workflow and graphical tools to create their style. Thus, this essay proposes Hirschfeld’s artworks as style guides to design and develop 3D line art characters in real-time animation. An innovative workflow focusing on the artistic directed control of the selection and the thickness of lines is explored and examined. Tools for real-time line style editing are developed to assist the creation of 3D real-time line art and animation.