Please note: This master’s thesis presentation will take place in DC 2310 and online.
Zane Wang, Master’s candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
Supervisor: Professor Craig Kaplan
Pixel art is a well studied art form that arose from technical limitations on computing hardware in the early 1980s. Characterized by a deliberately limited resolution and colour palette, pixel art is as an artistic exercise in the conveyance of visual information with a limited number of samples, while avoiding certain unpleasant visual artifacts. In this thesis, we present a first solution to a novel problem in computer graphics — how do we render images in the pixel art style on other tilings of the plane besides the usual squares, all while respecting image features?
We formulate the non-square pixel art rendering task as an energy minimization problem over tile-shaped filter supports, given a conventional raster image and geometric tiling data as input. We compute tile energy gradients via rasterization, using this information to evolve an optimal filter support shape. We then demonstrate that our method produces images with superior qualitative and quantitative properties in comparison with naive methods.
Our program can compute finished images in seconds, and allows the user to watch the pixel art evolve in real time. We also provide some basic stylization and interaction features for artists, such as colour palette generation in a perceptually uniform colour space, and brush-based vertex manipulation to adjust the tile filters. This method has the potential to be useful in several artistic contexts, such as the creation of highly stylized portraiture and landscapes, and authoring of image and video for real hardware displays that use non-square pixels.
To attend this master’s thesis presentation in person, please go to DC 2310. You can also attend virtually on MS Teams.