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Discussion on supporting Animation Production and more

30/7/2021

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Earlier this year in April, our Dr. Nelson  Chu was invited to give  a talk at the   ACAS Inaugural conference.   As you may know, Expresii has been used in the production of a few animated shorts and the ink-painting-styled feature animation Red Squirrel Mai   (although the production of Mai  may be halted).  Here we'd like to elaborate more on the questions raised during the conference for Nelson:

Q: From your lecture, we have seen the many possibilities of traditional ink painting in digital art. I think it's a combination of traditional art and computer skills, as well as a deep understanding of animation. How do you manage the relationship between them?  

A: Hiring multi-talented people can help bridge the gaps. I believe they have a higher chance solving problems that have not been solved before. I have been lucky to have some tech-savvy and self-motivated artists to work with. For instance, my friend   Shuen Leung, who has been using Expresii since its early versions, can produce nice work without me giving much instruction.   Whenever I have some new functionality added to the program, she would just explore  it and see what she can come up with it.   Our (then) director   Angela Wong, soon recognized Shuen's abilities and invited her to join the production team. Having Shuen in the team had been a privilege.   She's also a kung fu practitioner, who can inform us on the kung fu moves that would appear in the Mai movie.  

In my role, I simply try my best to fulfill the program feature requests  from the directors.   They are the actual ones managing different people in the production team. I can't speak for them, but from what I've observed, putting people in the right roles would definitely help make things smooth.

Q: How can experts in different fields work well together?

A: Mutual respect and good communication are important. Try understand others' point of view and/or the constraints they have.  For example, many of us have opinions on how ink-painting-styled animation should be like. We may offer our views and in fact, there has been some heated discussions. Ultimately, it  would be the film director to decide. For the production to go on, we let those in the managing positions do their jobs.  As a decision maker, one has to consider all the opinions and make appropriate choices.  It surely is not easy.  
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Q: Is there  an inherent contradiction  between the serendipity of ink painting and the standardization resulting from computer algorithm or automation?

A: I actually don't see a contradiction here.  What you do depends on the project at hand. As an artist in general, I think serendipity is great and that's mainly why I started building my own tool for brush painting.  But for animation production,  we hire many animators to work on the same film. We need standardization  (e.g. style guide) so that the resultant animation looks coherent. Another reason for  standardization  is that we want to be able to control the amount of flickering between frames due to stroke differences. Some say, "if it's repeatable, it's not art". But here you actually  want the strokes to be repeatable with desired parameters! ^_^  Imagine, when you're half way done with your frames, your art director comes to you and asks, “Can you make the tentacles of the octopus a bit thicker?” If your  strokes are auto-generated instead of hand-painted, you can simply change the   parameters and have the computer re-render it!

Q: How do you see the future of ink-painting-styled animation (水墨動畫) ?

A:   Previously, only large studios can afford to do research  work.  They develop new algorithms for, say, simulating animal fur to support their story telling.  Nowadays, more individuals are learning programming, and one can come up with new algorithms specially designed for ink-painting-styled animation so that they don't need to rely on existing software, which may not be suitable for the effects they are after. That said, if some party is determined to invest on new ink-painting-styled animation, they still need to be patient, as developing and putting tailor-made new solution into a workable pipeline usually require a lot of experimentation.  The good news is that Angela Wong has prototyped a workable solution that is   already    used in the animated short Find Find  (as discussed in my talk). We just need to further develop it and put it to the test more. Let us know if you're interested to join this journey.

Q: How can artists or creatives get more involved in computer programming or on the technological side?

A:   They can learn programming online for free. Just do a search on creative coding  and you will find a bunch of tutorials and samples. I think that's exactly how Angela Wong learned programming. I believe you will be easily inspired to use code to do your next project!

Q: A really interesting point was bought up about how technology might be infiltrating art and calligraphy. On that note, what are your opinions on using Artificial Intelligence (AI) for storyboarding  and animation? Do you think it will enhance our experiences  or just make us obsolete?

A:   Current state-of-the-art AI  needs a large number of samples as input for it to be able to learn some pattern in the samples and apply that same pattern to perform certain tasks.  That means it can not be creative all by itself yet.  Computers are very good at optimization. If you have well-defined goal or cost function, computer programs can find the optimal configuration that minimizes that cost.   

I think the general public's  view towards AI may be skewed by movies or fictions, thinking that AI can already think almost like a human.  No, we're still quite far from that. And, speaking of AI, beware there're some  opportunists trying to fool you with  fake AI!   


​Afterword

When Daisy Du of ACAS first contacted me in 2019, I'm a bit surprised that there is an academic association dedicated to Chinese animation studies.  I'm glad to see such an enthusiasm towards ink-painting-styled animation from humanity scholars.   I hope more resources can be given to accelerate modern development of CGI ink-painting-styled animation.

Here, I'd like to show you a 2018 tweet by a Japanese CG artist commenting on the lost tech of ink painting animation (水墨画によるアニメーション): "When would a hero using Expresii to make animation appear?"
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Japanese CG artist 宍戸幸次郎: Expresiiでア二メ作る猛者はいつ出るのか (何時有猛者用Expresii 做水墨動畫?)

Really, you just need the right people  in the right roles. Will you be the next hero(s) or be one that help bring up   such hero(s)?   千里馬常有,但伯樂 不常有。在殘酷的社會環境,人才往往給埋沒掉。但願多點人在能力範圍内,可讓千里馬得到發揮。
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2020 conclusion and Looking Forward

19/12/2020

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2020 went too quickly. No travel. In fact, our activities were mostly confined in our neighborhood.​  Nevertheless, the development of Expresii never stopped. Just check our Update Log for a (truncated) list of what have been done.  

2020 Review

Animation / Automation

Have been collaborating with a small team of animators this year on a short film Find Find , whose production started in March.  It serves as an experiment for how Expresii can be used for animation. We are developing a system that can automatically control the brush (and other attributes like color loading) in Expresii to produce a sequence of animation frames.  This lays a ground for modern ink-painting animation  (水墨動畫). Click the octopus below to watch an illustrative video.
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The animation is set to premiere  in mid-2021.   

Running on Mac / ARM-based machines

In mid-2020, it's been proven that Expresii can run on an Intel-based Mac via Parallels Desktop 15 or later, complete with Apple Pencil support (with pressure and tilt) via Sidecar, but the save / export function of Expresii was not working  due to limitation of Parallels' OpenGL implementation. Since version 2020.11.01, we updated Expresii to overcome this limitation so that it can now run  fully via Parallels. So, yeah, apart from running Expresii via Bootcamp, you can now run it directly from within MacOS via Parallels. 
However, it seems Apple is ditching Intel processors for future Mac's in flavor of their own ARM-based processors. For Expresii to run on ARM,  a crucial part from Microsoft is the support of  OpenGL 3.3+ for Windows on ARM. They have good progress on this, citing   in November   an   Insider version of the compatibility package  that one can test with.  Since one can already   run Windows on ARM on Apple's new M1-based machines, it's quite possible we can run Expresii on ARM-based Apple hardware. 

Those of you having an ARM-based machine can try Windows on ARM (if on Apple M1, here's an   installation guide) and get the   Insider preview     of the OpenGL 3.3 package to try Expresii there already. For those of you hoping to run it via   Parallels,  Parallels just released a   tech preview  in which you can run Windows on ARM as virtual machine  on an M1 Apple machines. So for those of you having a Parallels 16 license, you can already try it.   If you do try them, let me know how it goes!  

2021-04 Update: 
  Yes, Expresii  runs on Windows 10 ARM version via Parallels 16.5 on Apple Silicon M1 machine!

new hardware for color input / control

In March 2020, we got a call from Taiwanese company Ufro.  Their CEO would like us to support their new color-picking mechanism, in preparation for the then-upcoming Lenovo E-Color Pen. We're happy to help. In July this E-Color Pen started to hit the market, and we did some demos for it. Expresii became the only app that can show off this E-Color Pen with gorgeous  color blending effects. 

In May, we added support for on-the-fly adjustment of loading color hue, lightness & saturation via hotkeys in Expresii.   More pen tablet makers are adding dials to their hardware and we also showed you can use those dials for real-time  color adjustment  by assigning the dial to our hotkeys. 

We have been in contact with other hardware makers  too.  Would reveal more when collaborations come to fruition.
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Beautiful watercolor patterns produced while demonstrating an XP-Pen pen display
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Demonstrating the Lenovo E-Color Pen

Optimization

Since February, the file size of an Expresii artwork file and in-memory storage size are significantly reduced.   In October, the artwork export rendering implementation is replaced with one that is more amenable to having more layers.  In December, artwork  rendering is also optimized to up to 50% faster (or  80% for a bit lower quality). These path the way  to allowing more layers  or future enhancements. 

2021 Ahead: Improvements & New Features

Sorry for the lack of a roadmap thus far.   Since the internal of Expresii is much more complex than ordinary paint programs, it takes more effort to design and implement stuffs.  Quite some users still don't have a good GPU and without  a good GPU, we have to be economical when using GPU resources. Now that hardware has improved and capable GPUs are more common in new machines, we'd like to update Expresii to allow better experience given more available GPU compute and memory   resources.

Suminagashi

Suminagashi is a form of marbling.  In October, we   gave a preview   of our implementation in Expresii and we passed it to our trusted user Shuen Leung, and she produced the following artwork:
Sample Suminagashi artwork done in Expresii by Shuen
Sample Suminagashi artwork done in Expresii by Shuen
There is still some more work to be done before we can release it to the public. Let us know how you like it so far.

Better Dry-up

I know many of you find it hard to paint when the paint never really dries and needing to use a new layer for sharp overlapping shapes.   That would change soon. 

More layers

With those optimizations mentioned above, we're ready to add support for more layers.

Western watercolor

We'll start adding Western watercolor specific features like drips, backruns or granulation.

Image Import

Some of you were asking for image import.  With that above-mentioned dry-up change, import would be possible.

Oil paint

Our Nelson Chu has been thinking about how to do even better than what he did for oil paint simulation in  Fresh Paint (Project Gustav) . Hopefully, we can come up with a good solution in the coming year following Western watercolor.

RYB color model

We already have an initial implementation of the RYB color model. This makes the colors look more natural, but it actually narrows the range of possible colors you can get. The greys become kind of sepia. 
RGB / CMY color model
RYB color model

Your support is Essential

Existing customers will get these enhancements for free.  So, you don't need to wait if you want to purchase Expresii now.  ​ (^人^)

​If you like what we're doing, please support this endeavor by buying the app (or giving a tip by paying for a trial key) and tell your friends who might be interested.  Everything counts!     Thanks you!      m(_    _)m 
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Expresii on Surface Pro 7

13/11/2020

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It has been one year since the Microsoft Surface Pro 7 was released.   We got ourselves an i7 model to test with. We've had it for about a month now and it has been very responsive.
The following is a quick test on its performance. As you can see, it allows fluid digital watercolor in Expresii. In case you can't afford the i7 model, you can still get by with the i5 model, but  you may want to use the   Fast Mode   for more responsiveness.
Did some calligraphy test too:
Don't have the original Surface Pen with us right now, so we picked up a Surface Pen alternative in these tests. 
Finally  we'd like to show you some sneak peek at some latest development in   ink-painting-style animation (水墨動畫) that we are working on.   Follow our animator collaborator's Instagram  to learn more. Their work is so cool & cute at the same time!
​And yes, Surface Pro is used in producing this animation, in case you wonder.   ​​(・ωー)~☆
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Animated Film "Red Squirrel Mai" at Filmart 2019

24/3/2019

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Red Squirrel Mai  2019 teaser
Expresii is being used for producing the animated feature film  Red Squirrel Mai 紅松鼠米高. Do check out    the teaser above (those from China can see it  here)!  This film uses Expresii extensively - both animation background and foreground  are drawn with Expresii.   The teaser video is shown at Hong Kong Filmart 2019 earlier this month.   We thank   Ink Culture Ltd and Rooftop Animation for producing such a meaningful work - this animation is the first one made in Hongkong/China that has a distinct style different from all previous works.   It's been only less than two years from the setting up studios in Hong Kong and GuangZhou.   
Seeing the teaser of Red Squirrel Mai for the first time reminds me of my feeling when I first saw a Kungfu movie of Bruce Lee - it's different from all the previous 'ink wash animation' I've seen! - Nelson Chu
第一次看到《紅松鼠米高》預告片給我的感覺,就像我當年第一次看到李小龍功夫片一樣 —— 這跟之前我看過的都不一樣啊!  - Nelson Chu
Note:You need to watch it on 4k uncompressed to really appreciate the difference. Previous "ink animations" often use simulated fume or make things blurry to give an impression of ink. In contrast, the teaser of <Mai> shows texture that is never seen before. 現在的動畫大都是‘單綫平凃’,而之前的’水墨動畫‘基本三類:1 用CG’雲烟’當水墨,2. 把東西 ’模糊化‘ 當水墨 3.用真的水墨筆觸貼圖。而此《紅》樣片出來的效果是有質感的!這個你必須要用4k 原片才感受到。網絡的FHD 版本太失真了!。。。所以才說像李小龍功夫片,李小龍給你的感覺是’真功夫‘,其他人的動作就是沒那麽快,不是同一個層次的。
Ink wash animation  is a  proud product of China from the 60's to the 80's. Nowadays,   many attempts have been made to modernize ink wash animation.   Our Expresii does provide a refreshing visual style that couldn't be achieved before.
One of the film Directors of Red Squirrel Mai   Angela Wong draw Mai the squirrel, the movie  protagonist,    on the spot:
Visitors can get a glimpse of of the production processing:
Our Nelson demonstrates calligraphy in the show:
And also some doodles (after the  famous comic artist 草日 from Hong Kong):
An inkjet printer was also setup there to print artwork done with Expresii on the spot:
We're lucky to encounter Kumamon as our Mai just stepped out of our booth: ^_^
 P.S. Now you know why we have to put up a notice forbidding new users to use Expresii for making feature films till later in 2019.   ^_^
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Year of the Rooster - Animated GIF 簡單動畫

2/2/2017

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Made a few animated GIF for the new year with Expresii.  
This one is a design made using the Chinese character 鷄 , which means Chicken:
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Running chicken 走雞:
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'​Sleep well on the 3rd day of the new year':
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Essentially these animations are done using the Overlay as onion skin.  You can also apply LightBox effect on the Overlay.  You can toggle the Overlay via  hotkeys ~ ` to alpha = 0 and 1. We output the frames to another program to do cropping or composition,  and then  feed the final frames to an online GIF maker  to make the GIFs.

The following videos shows some of the stroking process:
Finally here is a Lion Dance greeting GIF made by Rooftop Animation using Expresii (along with Photoshop, etc) for the new year:
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Tiltable & Rotatable @ SIGGRAPH ASIA 2016

9/12/2016

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Thanks to CGVisual.com, we were able to participate in the SIGGRAPH ASIA 2016 Exhibition held in Macao last week from 6-8th Decemeber 2016.  The show was busier than we expected! As a long-time SIGGRAPH visitor commented, "The show is  quite respectable!"  ​  (๑•̀ㅂ•́)و✧

28" Tiltable & Rotatable Surface

For this show, we brought to you the freshly baked Expresii running on a 28" 4K  screen held on a gas-strut flexi mount, which provides more degrees of freedom than the just-released Microsoft Surface Studio.  We still can't get  hold of a Surface Dial yet, so instead we use game controllers as our non-dominant hand   remote.  For pen input, we still use our trusted Wacom intuos 3 that supports stylus tilt sensing.  This new version of Expresii accepts user-definable game controller button assignment. We ran Expresii on an ITX desktop equipped with a mid-range nVidia GPU from the latest generation (Pascal ) for a very smooth painting experience.  This CPU used was only an  Intel   i5 from a few years back.  Although Expresii's simulation is so much more advanced than all other paint apps, no super computer is required to run it!  OpenGL is used for both our watercolor simulation and rendering.
PictureNatural digital ink flow made possible by our software tech
​

SIGGRAPH  is poised as the most prestigous  conference for Computer Graphics & Interactive Techniques in the world. This time with a large 28" 4K screen, we amazed many visitors  with the high-quality rendering of brush strokes and ink flows in Expresii.  Everyone says WOW when they see us start rotating the screen and the ink flows down according to the inclination -  just like in real life!     (°o°;)

The following video shows you the secret of how we combine low-cost off-the-shelf hardware with Expresii to crerate this amazing painting experience:
We got lots of praises  from Computer Graphics professionals including  Richard Chuang, co-founder of PDI.  ​It was much fun talking to visitors, student volunteers, or other booth staff members alike from all over the world.  Look at that cute fox  animation that got made right on the spot  below!  ୧༼✿ ͡◕ д ◕͡ ༽୨
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Cute Fox Jump animation made by Angela Wong on the spot

Gamepad as Controller for Digital Painting

Did we mention we can‘t get hold of a Surface Dial so we use a gamepad instead? Both our i-rocks gamepad and the Dial are connected via bluetooth, but the former provides more direct buttons/control than the latter. It can also be held by your non-dominant hard for quick control as you paint (instead of having to be put on some  surface level enough so that it doesn't slide down). We believe this is generally preferred over the Dial by digital painters - we want to use muscle memory for fixed functionality instead of figuring what mode we are in  or going through radial menu . Wacom offers a similar hand-held Express Key Remote Control  with several buttons for their large Cintiq (vs. just one single button and a dial rim). And ClipStudio Paint also offers their own one-hand controller. If  one really likes a circular motion offered by the Dial, we can simulate it with the joystick, with which you can,  say,  circle clockwise & anti-clockwise for undo & redo. 
Let  us know if you prefer a Dial or a hand-held.

more collaboration please!

We look forward to Surface Pen being tilt-sensitive so that we no longer have to use another controller for adjusting the tilt. ​ We believe both mobile and desktop are important to creators so we will continue working our butts off to innovate in both spaces. It is great that now Microsoft enters into the creator market. We really hope hardware makers can work with us for the best expereince possible.  ​(•̀o•́)ง
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Acknowledgement​
​

This SIGGRAPH ASIA booth showcase won't be possible without the tremedous help from:

Mark Lam of  CGVisual 
Ah Man from  VTech
H2o and Maggie from  lfxLab 
Angela Wong from  Rooftop Animation
​
And Shuen Leung, who allowed us to print her Expresii artwork for the booth

We also thank all the old and new friends who came and supported us!   
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Animated GIF ‘讚’

6/6/2015

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Chinese character '讚' written with Expresii Lite.  用Expresii Lite 寫的‘讚’!
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