Reading #27: K-sketch: A 'Kinetic' Sketch Pad for Novice Animators (Davis)

Comments

Jonathan

Summary

Animators in the world today have many tools to work with and the internet has shown that they are very interesting ideas from people with all types of backgrounds that not necessarily have an animation background. For this novice user as well as for the experienced user that needs a fast prototype of his idea, a tool that enables a quick transition between the creative stage and a simple animation is highly desired. Usually the animation process begins with a storyboard. K-Sketch basically enables the user to create a sketched storyboard that can be animated immediately allowing the user to better visualize the idea.
The paper discusses the implementation of K-sketch as well as the user interface. Studies took place to determine the optimal set of operations in the UI. The resulting tool was tested and compared to MS Powerpoint as a reference of simple animation. The users preferred K-Sketch as it showed a more natural way of animating objects.

Discussion

In fact animation tools today still have a relatively steep learning curve, plus they don’t feel as natural as the storyboards drawn on pen and pencil. In my case I used to spend some time in middle school doing sketches in the top corner of notebooks to pass pages rapidly “animating” the sketches. Off course the task was tedious but hey, what else there is to do in middle school? I guess kids now can instead draw on simple sketch in their tablets and enjoy the magic of animation using tools like K-Sketch in very simple steps. I like very much the path of investigation of this paper, creating magic with a pen is made easier.