Towards Rendering the Style of 20th Century Cartoon Line Art in 3D Real-Time

Al Hirschfeld (1903-2003) is one of the foremost representatives of a great generation of cartoon line artists. He extensively drew the American popular culture of the whole 20th century at its peak of liveliness and pushed beyond the conventional and commercial cartoon art with his exclusive focus on the minimalistic and expressive usage of pen-and-ink lines. However, the expressiveness of his line style has not been fully exploited in 3D real-time. We observe a lack of workflow and graphical tools to create his style. Thus, this essay proposes Hirschfeld's artworks as style guides to design and develop 3D line art characters in real-time animation. An innovative workflow focusing on the artistic directed control of the selection and the thickness of lines is explored and examined to assist the creation of 3D real-time line art and animation.