SandCanvas: A Multi-touch Art Medium Inspired by Sand Animation

• Main Authors: KAZI, Rubaiat Habib, CHUA, Kien-Chuan, ZHAO, Shengdong, DAVIS, Richard Christopher, Low, Kok-Lim
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2011
• Subjects: Sand animation; multitouch; tabletop computing; creativity; Software Engineering
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sis_research/1485; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/sis_research/article/2484/viewcontent/p1283_kazi.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

Sand animation is a performance art technique in which an artist tells stories by creating animated images with sand. Inspired by this medium, we have developed a new multitouch digital artistic medium named SandCanvas that simplifies the creation of sand animations. SandCanvas also goes beyond traditional sand animation with tools for mixing sand animation with video and replicating recorded free-form hand gestures. In this paper, we analyze common sand animation hand gestures, present SandCanvas’s intuitive UI, and describe implementation challenges we encountered. We also present an evaluation with professional and novice artists that shows the importance and unique affordances of this new medium.