Attention-Directing Composition of Ying Cao Rynson W.H. Lau Elements Look Over Here: Antoni B. Chan City University of Hong Kong
Composition of manga elements (i.e., subjects and balloons ) Motivation © Tsugumi Ohba, Takeshi Obata / Shueisha Inc.
Manga artist guides viewer’s eyes through the page Motivation © Tsugumi Ohba, Takeshi Obata / Shueisha Inc. Artist’s Guiding Path (AGP) Viewer Attention
Motivation One of the most difficult steps in manga production No existing comic creation programs for automatic composition
Goal 1.Rabbit, I came here for gold, 2. and I'm gonna get it! 3. I gotcha, you rabbit! I'll show you! Close-up Fast Long Medium Close-up Medium Big Close-up Medium You can't do this to me! Eureka! Gold at last! Talk
Related Work Balloon Placement [Kurlander et al. 1996] [Chun et al. 2006]
Eye-tracking Techniques for Comic Analysis and Creation [Jain et al. 2012][Toyoura et al. 2012] Related Work
Computational Manga [Qu et al. 2006] [Qu et al. 2008] [Cao et al. 2012] Related Work
Overview Input Storyboard Layout Probabilistic Graphical Model Input Infer Learn Data
Probabilistic Graphical Model
Data Acquisition 80 manga pages from three manga series Annotation [Motion state] [Shot type] [Panel Shape] [Subject] [Balloon] Eye movements of viewers
Probabilistic Graphical Model Abstracts artist’s guiding path as a latent variable Used for composition synthesis Connects artist’s guiding path, composition and viewer attention in a probabilisitc network Artist’s Guiding Path Composition Viewer Attention
Subject Placement Balloon Placement Viewer Attention (eye-gaze path) Local Composition in Panel Panel Properties Artist’s Guiding Path Probabilistic Graphical Model
Subject Placement Balloon Placement Viewer Attention (eye-gaze path) Local Composition in Panel Panel Properties Artist’s Guiding Path Probabilistic Graphical Model
Artist’s Guiding Path actual AGP underlying AGP
Subject Placement Balloon Placement Viewer Attention (eye-gaze path) Local Composition in Panel Panel Properties Artist’s Guiding Path Probabilistic Graphical Model
Panel Properties and Local Composition Model
Subject Placement Balloon Placement Viewer Attention (eye-gaze path) Local Composition in Panel Panel Properties Artist’s Guiding Path Probabilistic Graphical Model
Subject Placement
Balloon Placement Viewer Attention (eye-gaze path) Local Composition in Panel Panel Properties Artist’s Guiding Path Probabilistic Graphical Model
Balloon Placement
Subject Placement Balloon Placement Viewer Attention (eye-gaze path) Local Composition in Panel Panel Properties Artist’s Guiding Path Probabilistic Graphical Model
Viewer Attention
Complete Model
Interactive Composition Synthesis
Generate a composition, subject to user-specified semantics Layout Generation + Composition Synthesis 1.Rabbit, I came here for gold, 2. and I'm gonna get it! 3. I gotcha, you rabbit! I'll show you! Input: subject & script Close-up Fast shot type & motion state Talk inter-subject constraint
Layout Generation … Database of labeled pages [# of panels ] [# of subjects] [# of balloons] [shot type] [motion state]
Composition Synthesis Configurations of elements A Maximum A Posteriori inference framework Constraint-based likelihoodConditional prior Input elements & semantics + Layout Constraints
Constraint-based likelihood
Results and Evaluation
Comparison to Heuristic Method for Balloon Placement Our approachHeuristic [Chun et al. 2006]
Comparison to Heuristic Method for Balloon Placement Our approachHeuristic [Chun et al. 2006]
Comparison to Manual Method User study: How well does our approach facilitate manga composition, as compared to existing manual tool? Participant preference votingTime for one composition
Eye-tracking Experiment and Analysis Is our approach effective in directing viewer attention, as compared with the alternatives? To measure fixation consistency across different viewers Similarity metrics:1.Inlier percent 2.Root Mean Squared Distance (RMSD)
Eye-tracking Experiment and Analysis 1.Inlier percent Viewer A Saliency Map Viewer B Inliers Classification
RMSD, 2.RMSD Viewer A Viewer B Eye-tracking Experiment and Analysis
Comparison to Existing Manga Pages OriginalSynthesized © Tsugumi Ohba, Takeshi Obata / Shueisha Inc.
Summary A novel model for representing dependency among the artist’s guiding path, composition and viewer attention A novel approach for joint composition of subjects and balloons Enable easy and quick creation of attention-directing compositions
Limitations & Future Work Consider visual appearance of manga elements Extend to other graphic design tasks Understand readers’ behaviors
Thanks