Arts and Computing

The Diasynchronoscope is a prototypical, experimental medium that draws on tropes from animation and Gestalt grouping principles to create the perception of apparent motion using concrete objects. In short, it is a way of animating without a screen.
Through documentation and discussion of selected artistic case studies we interrogate the Diasynchronoscope as an emergent new animation medium. Each realized artwork reveals more formalisms and boundaries inherent to creating affective screenless animation. The focus of this paper is how traditional animation informs the Diasynchronoscope and, in turn, how formalisms developed in the Diasynchronoscope may inform current animation practice. The Diasynchronoscope system choreographs time in space by taking time-based techniques from animation and converting them to the spatial. This novel technique has been called the ‘diasynchronic’ technique and the system; the ‘Diasynchronoscope’.

PREFACE
“These three fields require a high degree of collaboration with
artists, producers, story editors, directors, programmers, and
any number of other people in both the executive and creative
ends of the business.This is most emphatically true for animation
and games. Depending on the project, you will receive
notes and feedback from any variety of people. In animation,
from story editor, producers, more producers, the producer’s
pet sitter, maybe a toy executive—whoever is allowed to have a
say. In comics, primarily the editor, but your artist must feel
that he or she is an integral part of a team, not a hired hand.
In games, you might get feedback from anyone on the design
team—publisher, producer, designers, programmers, animators,
and so on.”
Christy Marx, in the preface of her book Writing for Animation,
Comics and Games, pg. xix.
We open our book of proceedings with the words of Christy Marx,
mainly because CONFIA 2013 - International Conference on
Illustration and Animation aims to be synonymous with plurality,
multiplicity and interdisciplinarity. Our teamwork and above all
our passion are ever present in CONFIA’s areas of focus: illustration
and animation.
We started with the need to build critical mass around the subjects
we research and teach in our educational institution - graphic
design, illustration and animation in graduate and postgraduate
programs - and today, we are proud to present another edition of
CONFIA. It is very important that this opportunity serve as a moment
for reflection and questioning, as it is not possible to understand
illustration and animation in a contemporary world without
thinking of the strong growth experienced by both fields in recent
years. Their ability to adapt everyday to new visual languages,
mainly due to the constant pressure exerted by constant technological
developments, is also a key factor. Both illustration and
animation have been showing strong signs of being autonomous,
inside the broader areas of art and technology. We therefore believe that these two collaborative subjects have shown that
there is a wide space for discussion and a vast field for research
practice. Indeed, this international conference represents a meeting
point for researchers from around the world, with speakers
from all continents joining us this year. As we write these words,
we are already certain that the second edition of CONFIA will be
successful for two reasons: first, the high quality of the papers we
received, and second, the multiplicity of activities carried out by
the authors in the present edition.
The conference features a wide range of specialists, lecturers,
researchers and illustration and animation artists, who are often
active in both theory and practice, which makes the debate and
the quality of proposals richer. We go from theory to practice and
then return to theory. This translates into the 45 selected papers
in this publication, covering a variety of broad subjects such as
drawing/illustration, animation and art theory. The content discusses
specific areas of knowledge including traditional drawing,
contemporary drawing, graphic illustration, information graphics,
editorial illustration, illustration for children, character design,
comics & graphic novels, scientific Illustration, 2D and 3D animation,
animation for video games, character animation, animation
for virtual and augmented reality, animation in interactive media,
motion graphics, sound and animation, linear storytelling, creative
writing, visual culture, interactive storytelling, narrative and
non-narrative animation illustration and animation pedagogy and
authorship in animation and illustration.
In such a diverse context, we are pleased to have as guest
keynote speakers Professor Paul Wells of Loughborough University,
director of the Animation Academy, and Professor Martin
Salisbury of Anglia Ruskin University, with extensive research
experience in animation and illustration, respectively - which
strengthens the link between research and practice in the resulting
academic debate.
So with the mission of discussing these issues, challenges, opportunities
and trends related to everything from tradition to the
constant new developments and applications, the overall objectives
for the conference were achieved and now lie in the readers’
hands: to present new ideas, new technological developments that
fulfill the requirements of the market and practical,
state-of-the-art solutions; to provide guidance for further research
and development; and to strengthen the bridge between research
and practice.
Welcome to CONFIA 2013
Paula Tavares and Pedro Mota Teixeira
Polytechnic Institute of Cávado and Ave, Portugal

We introduce the idea of using a perception-based medial point description of a biological form (such as a 2D profile of a moving animal) as a basis for movement computing which delivers computational schemes to automatically annotate movement and be capable of producing meaningful qualitative descriptions. We distinguish interior from exterior shape representation. Interior medialness is used to characterise deformations from straightness, corners and necks, while exterior medialness identifies the main concavities and inlands which are useful to verify parts extent and reason about articulation and movement. We define an interior dominant point as a well localised peak value in medialness representation, while an exterior dominant point is evaluated by identifying a region of concavity sub-tended by a minimum angular support. Furthermore, significant convex points are extracted from the object’s form to further characterise the elongation of parts. We propose that our evaluated feature points are sufficiently representative, as a basis for shape characterisation, to address many of the goals of movement computing.