WDANet: exploring stylized animation via diffusion model for
woodcut-style design
Abstract
Stylized animation is often adored for its innovative and daring visual
creativity. Due to the strong visual impact and color contrast inherent
in woodcut style design, it has been applied in animation and comics.
However, traditional woodcuts, hand-drawn, and previous computer-aided
methods have yet to address the issues of dwindling design inspiration,
lengthy production times, and complex adjustment procedures. To tackle
these challenges, we propose a novel network framework, the
Woodcut-style Design Assistant Network (WDANet). Notably, our research
is the first to utilize diffusion models to streamline the woodcut-style
design process. We curate the Woodcut-62 dataset, which features works
from 62 renowned historical artists, to train WDANet in absorbing and
learning the aesthetic nuances of woodcut prints, offering users a
wealth of design references. Our WDANet integrates text and
woodcut-style image features based on a denoising network. WDANet allows
users to input or slightly modify a text description to quickly generate
accurate, high-quality woodcut-style designs, saving time and offering
flexibility. As confirmed by user studies, quantitative and qualitative
analyses show that WDANet outperforms the current state-of-the-art in
generating woodcut-style images and proves its value as a design aid.