Achievement

Trainee Tim Gerstner, working with faculty DeCarlo and Nealen created an automatic method that can be used to abstract high resolution images into very low resolution outputs with reduced color palettes in the style of pixel art. The method simultaneously solves for a mapping of features and a reduced palette needed to construct the output image. The results are an approximation to the results generated by pixel artists. The method was compared to the results of naive processes in a user study and showed a significant improvement. Aside from assisting a class of artists in the medium, applications for this work include automatic and semi-automatic design of low-resolution imagery for handheld, desktop, and online contexts like digital games, Facebook, and Flickr, wherever iconic representations of high resolution imagery are used. (Proceedings: International Symposium on Non-Photorealistic Animation and Rendering)