K-Sketch: A “Kinetic” Sketch Pad for Novice Animators

Summary –

This paper talks about the design of a fast, simple and powerful 2D animation sketching s tool called Kinetic Sketch Pad (K-Sketch).  K-Sketch is a pen based informal 2D animation system which supports wide range of applications. A study was done with both animator and non-animators to capture the library of usage scenarios and the basic requirements of such a tool. The main focus of the work was to reduce the learning time, powerful to handle the most of the scenarios and fast enough to accomplish the task. With the above goals interface of the K-Sketch was optimized by minimizing the number of steps required to complete a task and also number of animation operations to support all the scenarios. Paper also talks about the layout of the tool and also the editing and time control features. The evaluation result of the K-Sketch shows that it’s around three times faster than other animation tools and very simple to use.

Thoughts –

Paper has an excellent idea of developing an informal tool with powerful range of library of usage, simple interface to learn and fast enough to accomplish the tasks. It addresses the feedback collected from both the experienced and inexperienced animators which is really good and help to make a general purpose tool.

I like the feature coordinating motions and idea of providing a button to user to control the speed of the animation. And also the idea of ghost view of an object is really good.

I think the idea of this paper can be extended to create a general purpose 3D animation system. The design of the 3D animation system can be done in a similar way first by collecting the feedback from the target audience, both experienced and inexperienced.