SVA Animation Guild

Example-Based Synthesis of Stylized Facial Animations

Graphics research from Daniel Sýkora et al at DCGI, Czech Republic, presents a method of realtime style transfer focused on human faces, similar to their previous StyLit work.

It should be noted that the video below is a demonstration of results, is silent, and the official paper has not been made public yet:

I’ve had a general idea what these things did but wasn’t completely sure what their specific functions were. I decided to sit down and figure it out, and I have thrown together a short reference guide for anyone who is confused about them. I know there are multiple translations of SAI floating around, so if some of these terms don’t sound familiar, just know that I’m talking about the three settings that appear under the texture in the brush tool settings (note that this won’t apply to any tool types except for brushes and watercolor brushes).

I don’t claim to be an expert so if you find I’ve made a mistake, let me know so I can update it, thanks! :3

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BLENDING (Color Blending)

This controls how readily the brush will inherit any colors you are painting over with it. For example, a 0% blending setting will pick up no existing colors, treating it as if you were painting on a transparent layer. A 100% blending setting will ONLY pick up existing colors (provided there are any). So at 100%, the color you’re using won’t even show up, unless you move to a transparent area. Blending is not affected by transparent pixels, so if you’re drawing on a blank layer it will have no effect.

So you can see from this example that the color I’m using gets harder to paint as the blending increases and more of the existing green is absorbed, until at 100% it is just completely turning green.

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DILUTION (Opacity Mix)

This controls how readily the brush will draw on a blank (transparent) part of the layer. A 0% Dilution will result in the brush painting very easily onto a blank surface, while a brush with 100% dilution will literally not paint on blank parts of the layer at all. Dilution is ONLY affected by transparent pixels. So it won’t do anything if the whole layer is already filled in (even with white). Dilution can be thought of as the inverse of the Blending setting in some ways.

So in this example, you can see that as dilution approaches 100%, the color I’m painting with basically becomes invisible. In fact, if you were to switch to binary color mode and look at this layer, there would literally be nothing there anymore!

Keep this in mind - if you ever can’t paint for some reason, check your dilution setting, it might have gotten accidentally bumped to 100!

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PERSISTENCE

This one goes hand-in-hand with blending. Basically, it controls how easily a brush shifts color as you are blending from one color to another. Rather, how long it “persists” if you will. Like blending, Persistence is only really relevant when painting over existing color so it’s mostly unaffected by transparent pixels. Basically, the higher the persistence, the longer it will take for the color to shift as you make a stroke, and subsequently, from which color to which other color it is shifting is dependent on the blending setting.

So for this example I’ve done the same test with three different levels of blending. I turned off all pressure sensitivity (actually I just used my mouse) to emphasize the effects in a controlled environment:

If blending is at 0%, persistence fails to have any real effect. With pressure on, there is only the difference of having to push harder, but the results will be the same as far as I can tell.

At a happy medium of 50%, persistence increase causes the orange that the brush is picking up to last longer as it goes into the green, until it never shifts to blue at all.

At 100% blending, there was never any blue in the first place, because as we already know, full blending causes you to only pick up existing color. So the persistence setting changes only how fast the orange changes to green.

Persistence is dependent upon the blending settings, so having them somewhere in the middle will probably produce the most optimal results.

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CONCLUSION

Ultimately how you use these is up to you, and is largely dependent on what kind of brush you’re making and what it will be used for. And most of these settings are meant to be used together in unison, so play around with them a lot!

If you are confused, or not sure what settings you want or what settings you should be using, a safe bet is to put them all at about 50% - that will produce fairly average results that are easy to work with, and it’s easy to remember in case you want to experiment but don’t want to forget your settings in case you decide to switch back. 

Hey friends!

I just looked over Loish’s work for that project and some of the final images from the game. Awesome! Thanks for the heads up. I’m REALLY glad you asked this question, because it highlights something really important to understand when you’re career-stalking and idolizing artists, and when you’re building portfolios. Ready?

Sometimes you are commissioned for your style and sometimes you’re commissioned for your mind. 

Loish was used as a pure concept artist here. You can see how everything she imagined for the character below went into the final, but it was redone in a completely different style. Artists who are known as both good problem solvers AND can make beautiful art can be hired twice as often as an artist who is strong only on one side. 

When you are working on portfolio pieces, make sure you’re not just highlighting your technical skills, but also your problem-solving and thought process. This is critical in fields like editorial and concept art and book covers. When you’re assigning yourself portfolio pieces make sure to use real articles or  books that already exist as a jumping-off point. You can even do this with concept art. Look at someone like Kevin Wada, who started his career by a personal project reimagining the X-Men as fashion illustrations. Set yourself interesting problems and ADs notice.

I know many of you artists - whether you draw, write, or compose - are frustrated that your original work, especially your dream projects, aren’t getting the responses you were hoping for.

I feel the same way.

But some of you express your frustrations completely destructively and blame the world for not giving you the spotlight.

When you do that, you’re blaming your problems for existing rather than adjusting and compromising to solve them. You’re making excuses for your mistakes. You’re demanding the world to change but you are not willing to change with it.

This is the perfect mindset to NEVER succeed in anything, ever.

You need to accept some basic truths of art before you can go any further:

Your art should teach you as much as or more than it teaches others: If you claim your art opens horizons and widens minds, yours should be the first priority. You cannot speak without listening. You are not a righteous prophet enlightening the heathens with the true word. You are one humble person and your art is one humble person’s story.

There are no new stories, but there are always new storytellers. That amazing idea you have that nobody’s ever thought of before? Someone has. But nobody has told the story your way, or drawn the character your way, or sung the song your way. Art is not about being new. It is about being you.

Popular art is all about the beholder. All these shows and games with so much fan art? They got to that level because they command a personal investment from and serve the viewer - they have worlds their fans want to be part of, and your canon will be swept aside along the way. You the artist are not a god or a wise sage. You are a guide and a footman. To be an artist is to be humanity’s servant, not its lord - and there’s no shame in that.

Most of your fans are not artists or art critics. While there will be a good number of them in your fanbase, the vast majority are not going to be super-open-minded creative thinkers who value every single opinion, outlook, and story just because it’s done technically well. They will be ordinary people with ordinary, selfish interests, and they will care about your content more than your talent. You have to balance what you want to draw with what everyone wants to see.

But the most important part of being an artist or really a person at all is to understand this:

Nobody owes you success.

Nobody is under any obligation to pay anything you produce a second glance or support or promote it in any way.

Nobody is spiting or robbing you by not giving you a like or a reblog or a follow.

Every single gesture of appreciation you receive from someone is a courtesy - a gift that you earn, not a right you’re entitled to.

It is not the job of your audience to love your work. It is your job to make it lovable. And just because you are working really hard does not mean you are working in the right direction.

I know that thousands upon thousands of artists put hours or months or years into a project and feel like they get nothing in return. Sometimes it is not how hard you’re working but what you’re working for that is the problem. 

Sometimes you need to slow down and think, “Do I have to have this just so? What would the kind of person interested in my work be looking for, and where can I address it? Am I maybe taking myself and my work a little too seriously?” 

And a lot of artists don’t realize that as an amateur, you are the sole proprietor - you are your art. Whether people like you determines whether they like your art.

And that’s why when you blame everybody else and post ungrateful, catty garbage like this:

… you don’t subsequently become the next Toby Fox.

The simple fact is that people will pay you attention if they think your offering + your hassle are worth their attention.

You need to create a world that someone other than you will have fun in and you need to be a good host to everyone who visits. 

You need a world that will welcome your fans with open arms.

You need to build a world people can live & play in.

And you and your world need to appreciate your fans just for showing up.

Because this is exactly what the big fish do.

because they spread your work around to more people without shanking you on credit and who gets the likes

because they make your work show up sooner & more often on searches and are simply a nice gesture

because they take time out and pay good money to listen to your story and make you from a pauper into a prince

I appreciate the likes

I appreciate the reblogs

SAVE FULLSIZE HERE

THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO CONTRIBUTED! 

i would also appreciate it if you also shared this on twitter

Hi guys! I think it might be incredibly important to creative professionals, hobbyists, etc. to know about this. Feel free to reblog w/ more info, or if I’ve gotten something wrong.

Carla Hayden, librarian of Congress and anti-copyright activist, has the power to change the copyright laws in the USA to:

If you find a piece of work (such as a picture of a flower, or a cool drawing of a goth anime character) and cannot track down the original creator after searching “diligently”, it becomes free to use by anyone.

You can find a more indepth summary of what they’re trying to do from the 2008 orphan works bill here.

TLDR: Your work may no longer have guaranteed copyright protection if people don’t speak up.

Please read more about it here.

From the link:

As we’ve seen in the past, the anti-copyright lobby has the resources to gin up an “astroturf” response to such “surveys.” They can then use that “response” to go to Congress to present their case for free content as “the will of the people.”

To counter this lobbying tactic, creators must respond in force with a call to retain the full protections of copyright as articulated in Article I Section 8 of the Constitution.

Please take the time to go to the Library of Congress survey website and respond to Dr. Hayden’s three questions.

1. What are the knowledge, skills, and abilities you believe are the most important for the Register of Copyrights?

2. What should be the top three priorities for the Register of Copyrights?

3. Are there other factors that should be considered?

SURVEY SAMPLE ANSWERS HERE for those who want them!

I did some compositional how-to’s in my early weeks at Warner Bros. studios.   I thought it’d be great to post a series of these on the Tumblr’s for beginning board artists.

So, after years of visiting possibly the greatest art resource online, Gurney Journey (website of the creator of the gorgeous Dinotopia series, as well as numerous amazing drawing/painting books. Seriously this guy is INCREDIBLE LOOK AT HIS BLOG), I got this amazing poster promoting his latest book, Color and Light.

But I am vary rarely in one place long enough to look at the glorious thing on my wall, so I compiled a digital version.