EXCOL: an EXtract-and-COmplete layering approach to cartoon animation reusing

We introduce the EXtract-and-COmplete Layering method (EXCOL)--a novel cartoon animation processing technique to convert a traditional animated cartoon video into multiple semantically meaningful layers. Our technique is inspired by vision-based layering techniques but focuses on shape cues in both the extraction and completion steps to reflect the unique characteristics of cartoon animation. For layer extraction, we define a novel similarity measure incorporating both shape and color of automatically segmented regions within individual frames and propagate a small set of user-specified layer labels among similar regions across frames. By clustering regions with the same labels, each frame is appropriately partitioned into different layers, with each layer containing semantically meaningful content. Then, a warping-based approach is used to fill missing parts caused by occlusion within the extracted layers to achieve a complete representation. EXCOL provides a flexible way to effectively reuse traditional cartoon animations with only a small amount of user interaction. It is demonstrated that our EXCOL method is effective and robust, and the layered representation benefits a variety of applications in cartoon animation processing.