Challenges in Designing and Implementing a Vector-Based 2D Animation System

This chapter focuses on vector-based 2D animation systems, where artists can draw directly on a computer with digital input devices such as a drawing pad and stylus. A vector-based 2D animation system needs to help artists to manage their drawings like stroke, region, layer and color management, and so on. In 2D animation production, some steps are preferred to be done by computer, among the steps is the labor-intensive and time-consuming inbetweening. Computer-assisted automatic inbetweening helps artists to reduce tedious work and focus on key frame drawing. Coloring is another basic function in vector-based 2D animation systems. In raster-based coloring, a closed region consists of pixels and can be colored via a flood fill method. Automatic inbetweening is a very hard problem for computer-assisted animation systems. Automatic color updating is how to update region colors of drawings in the entire animation sequence if any modifications are made.