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This repository provides a curated collection of research for 🎞️hand-drawn animation / 🎞️cartoon videos.
💁♀️What You'll Find Here: Anime Video Research. Stuff closely related to hand-drawn animation(cartoon video) that could potentially assist enthusiasts or professionals create animations. e.g. Inbetweening, Colorization, etc.
🤷♀️What's Not Included: General Anime Research. i.e. Anime Style Transfer, Anime Image Enhancement, Anime Image generation. If you are interested in general anime research, please refer to this cool repo: 🕶️AwesomeAnimeResearch.
🙇♀️Creating animation is time-consuming and often involves arduour manual work. AI tools are changing this landscape. Researchers are coping with animation-specific challenges like inbetweening and frame-to-frame color propagation.
Cartoon research is new, niche, interesting, and we look forward to more researchers, including you, contributing to it.
The repo will keep track of the latest research. Feel free to follow and star ! 🌟
🚩【Dataset】OregairuChar: A Benchmark Dataset for Character Appearance Frequency Analysis in My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU |
Qi Sun, Dingju Zhou, Lina Zhang
[Nov., 2025] [arXiv, 2025]
🚩【Colorization】DACoN: DINO for Anime Paint Bucket Colorization with Any Number of Reference Images |
Kazuma Nagata, Naoshi Kaneko
[Sep., 2025] [arXiv 2025]
🚩【Generation】ToonComposer: Streamlining Cartoon Production with Generative Post-Keyframing |
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Lingen Li, Guangzhi Wang, Zhaoyang Zhang, Yaowei Li, Xiaoyu Li, Qi Dou, Jinwei Gu, Tianfan Xue, Ying Shan
[Aug., 2025] [arXiv 2025]
Generative AI for Cel-Animation: A Survey |
Yunlong Tang, Junjia Guo, Pinxin Liu, Zhiyuan Wang, Hang Hua, Jia-Xing Zhong, Yunzhong Xiao, Chao Huang, Luchuan Song, Susan Liang, Yizhi Song, Liu He, Jing Bi, Mingqian Feng, Xinyang Li, Zeliang Zhang, Chenliang Xu
[Jan., 2025] [arXiv 2025]
OregairuChar: A Benchmark Dataset for Character Appearance Frequency Analysis in My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU |
Qi Sun, Dingju Zhou, Lina Zhang
[Nov., 2025] [arXiv, 2025]
MagicAnime: A Hierarchically Annotated, Multimodal and Multitasking Dataset with Benchmarks for Cartoon Animation Generation |
Shuolin Xu, Bingyuan Wang, Zeyu Cai, Fangteng Fu, Yue Ma, Tongyi Lee, Hongchuan Yu, Zeyu Wang
[Jul., 2025] [arXiv 2025]
AnimeShooter: A Multi-Shot Animation Dataset for Reference-Guided Video Generation |
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Lu Qiu, Yizhuo Li, Yuying Ge, Yixiao Ge, Ying Shan, Xihui Liu
[Jun., 2025] [arXiv 2025]
LinkTo-Anime: A 2D Animation Optical Flow Dataset from 3D Model Rendering |
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Xiaoyi Feng, Kaifeng Zou, Caichun Cen, Tao Huang, Hui Guo, Zizhou Huang, Yingli Zhao, Mingqing Zhang, Diwei Wang, Yuntao Zou, Dagang Li
[Jun., 2025] [arXiv 2025]
Anita Dataset: An Industrial Animation Dataset |
Zhenglin Pan, Yu Zhu
[26 Jun., 2024] [Github Repo, 2024]
Sakuga-42M Dataset: Scaling Up Cartoon Research |
Zhenglin Pan, Yu Zhu, Yuxuan Mu
[13 May., 2024] [arXiv, 2024]
AnimeRun: 2D Animation Visual Correspondence from Open Source 3D Movies |
Li Siyao, Yuhang Li, Bo Li, Chao Dong, Ziwei Liu, Chen Change Loy
[10 Nov., 2022] [NeurIPS, 2022]
ToonComposer: Streamlining Cartoon Production with Generative Post-Keyframing |
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Lingen Li, Guangzhi Wang, Zhaoyang Zhang, Yaowei Li, Xiaoyu Li, Qi Dou, Jinwei Gu, Tianfan Xue, Ying Shan
[Aug., 2025] [arXiv 2025]
LongAnimation: Long Animation Generation with Dynamic Global-Local Memory |
Nan Chen, Mengqi Huang, Yihao Meng, Zhendong Mao
[Jul., 2025] [arXiv 2025]
FairyGen: Storied Cartoon Video from a Single Child-Drawn Character |
Jiayi Zheng, Xiaodong Cun
[Jun., 2025] [arXiv 2025]
DreamDance: Animating Character Art via Inpainting Stable Gaussian Worlds |
Jiaxu Zhang, Xianfang Zeng, Xin Chen, Wei Zuo, Gang Yu, Guosheng Lin, Zhigang Tu
[May., 2025] [arXiv 2025]
Aligning Anime Video Generation with Human Feedback |
Bingwen Zhu, Yudong Jiang, Baohan Xu, Siqian Yang, Mingyu Yin, Yidi Wu, Huyang Sun, Zuxuan Wu
[Apr., 2025] [arXiv 2025]
PhysAnimator: Physics-Guided Generative Cartoon Animation |
Tianyi Xie, Yiwei Zhao, Ying Jiang, Chenfanfu Jiang
[Jan., 2025] [arXiv 2025]
LayerAnimate: Layer-specific Control for Animation |
Yuxue Yang, Lue Fan, Zuzen Lin, Feng Wang, Zhaoxiang Zhang
[Jan., 2025] [arXiv 2025]
AniSora: Exploring the Frontiers of Animation Video Generation in the Sora Era |
Yudong Jiang, Baohan Xu, Siqian Yang, Mingyu Yin, Jing Liu, Chao Xu, Siqi Wang, Yidi Wu, Bingwen Zhu, Qi Sen, Xingyu Zheng, Jixuan Xu, Yue Zhang, Jinlong Hou, Huyang Sun
[Dec., 2024] [arXiv 2024]
MikuDance: Animating Character Art with Mixed Motion Dynamics |
Jiaxu Zhang, Xianfang Zeng, Xin Chen, Wei Zuo, Gang Yu, Zhigang Tu
[Nov.,2024] [arXiv, 2024]
Story2Board: A Training-Free Approach for Expressive Storyboard Generation |
David Dinkevich, Matan Levy, Omri Avrahami, Dvir Samuel, Dani Lischinski
[Aug., 2025] [arXiv 2025]
Lay2Story: Extending Diffusion Transformers for Layout-Togglable Story Generation |
Ao Ma, Jiasong Feng, Ke Cao, Jing Wang, Yun Wang, Quanwei Zhang, Zhanjie Zhang
[Aug., 2025] [arXiv 2025]
DACoN: DINO for Anime Paint Bucket Colorization with Any Number of Reference Images |
Kazuma Nagata, Naoshi Kaneko
[Sep., 2025] [arXiv 2025]
AnimeColor: Reference-based Animation Colorization with Diffusion Transformers |
Yuhong Zhang, Liyao Wang, Han Wang, Danni Wu, Zuzeng Lin, Feng Wang, Li Song
[Jul., 2025] [arXiv 2025]
SketchColour: Channel Concat Guided DiT-based Sketch-to-Colour Pipeline for 2D Animation |
Bryan Constantine Sadihin, Michael Hua Wang, Shei Pern Chua, Hang Su
[Jul., 2025] [arXiv 2025]
Animation Anycolor: Enhancing Line Drawing Colorization with Keypoint Matching |
Liyao Wang; Zuzeng Lin; Danni Wu; Zihao Yu; Suzhe Zhang; Zixian Wu
[Mar., 2025] [ICASSP 2025]
Image Referenced Sketch Colorization Based on Animation Creation Workflow |
Dingkun Yan, Xinrui Wang, Zhuoru Li, Suguru Saito, Yusuke Iwasawa, Yutaka Matsuo, Jiaxian Guo
[Feb., 2025] [arXiv 2025]
AniDoc: Animation Creation Made Easier |
Yihao Meng, Hao Ouyang, Hanlin Wang, Qiuyu Wang, Wen Wang, Ka Leong Cheng, Zhiheng Liu, Yujun Shen, Huamin Qu
[Dec., 2024] [arXiv 2024]
Paint Bucket Colorization Using Anime Character Color Design Sheets |
Yuekun Dai, Qinyue Li, Shangchen Zhou, Yihang Luo, Chongyi Li, Chen Change Loy
[Oct.,2024] [arXiv, 2024]
LVCD: Reference-based Lineart Video Colorization with Diffusion Models |
Zhitong Huang, Mohan Zhang, Jing Liao
[19 Sep. 2024] [arXiv, 2024]
Continual few-shot patch-based learning for anime-style colorization |
Akinobu Maejima, Seitaro Shinagawa, Hiroyuki Kubo, Takuya Funatomi, Tatsuo Yotsukura, Satoshi Nakamura & Yasuhiro Mukaigawa
[09 Jul., 2024] [CVM, 2024]
Learning Inclusion Matching for Animation Paint Bucket Colorization |
Yuekun Dai, Shangchen Zhou, Qinyue Li, Chongyi Li, Chen Change Loy
[2024] [CVPR, 2024]
Coloring anime line art videos with transformation region enhancement network |
Ning Wang, Muyao Niu, Zhi Dou, Zhihui Wang, Zhiyong Wang, Zhaoyan Ming, Bin Liu, Haojie Li
[Sep., 2023] [Elsevier, 2023]
SketchBetween: Video-to-Video Synthesis for Sprite Animation via Sketches |
Dagmar Lukka Loftsdóttir, Matthew Guzdial
[1 Sep., 2022] [ECCV, 2022]
Animation Line Art Colorization Based on Optical Flow Method |
Yifeng Yu, Jiangbo Qian, Chong Wang, Yihong Dong, Baisong Liu
[27 Aug., 2022] [SSNR, 2022]
The Animation Transformer: Visual Correspondence via Segment Matching |
Evan Casey, Víctor Pérez, Zhuoru Li, Harry Teitelman, Nick Boyajian, Tim Pulver, Mike Manh, William Grisaitis
[6 Sep., 2021] [arXiv, 2021]
Artist-Guided Semiautomatic Animation Colorization |
Harrish Thasarathan, Mehran Ebrahimi
[22 Jun., 2020] [arXiv, 2020]
Line Art Correlation Matching Feature Transfer Network for Automatic Animation Colorization |
Zhang Qian, Wang Bo, Wen Wei, Li Hai, Liu Jun Hui
[14 Apr., 2020] [arXiv, 2020]
Deep Line Art Video Colorization with a Few References |
Min Shi, Jia-Qi Zhang, Shu-Yu Chen, Lin Gao, Yu-Kun Lai, Fang-Lue Zhang
[24 Mar., 2020] [arXiv, 2020]
Automatic Temporally Coherent Video Colorization |
Harrish Thasarathan, Kamyar Nazeri, Mehran Ebrahimi
Skeleton-Driven Inbetweening of Bitmap Character Drawings |
Kirill Brodt, Mikhail Bessmeltsev
[2024] [SIGGRAPH ASIA, 2024]
Bridging the Gap: Sketch-Aware Interpolation Network for High-Quality Animation Sketch Inbetweening |
Jiaming Shen, Kun Hu, Wei Bao, Chang Wen Chen, Zhiyong Wang
[Aug., 2024] [ACMMM 2024]
Thin-Plate Spline-based Interpolation for Animation Line Inbetweening |
Tianyi Zhu, Wei Shang, Dongwei Ren, Wangmeng Zuo
[17 Aug., 2024] [arXiv, 2024]
ToonCrafter: Generative Cartoon Interpolation |
Jinbo Xing, Hanyuan Liu, Menghan Xia, Yong Zhang, Xintao Wang, Ying Shan, Tien-Tsin Wong
[29 May., 2024] [arxiv, 2024]
Joint Stroke Tracing and Correspondence for 2D Animation |
Haoran Mo, Chengying Gao, Ruomei Wang
[9 Apr., 2024] [SIGGRAPH, 2024]
Deep Geometrized Cartoon Line Inbetweening |
Li Siyao, Tianpei Gu, Weiye Xiao, Henghui Ding, Ziwei Liu, Chen Change Loy
[Nov., 2023] [ICCV 2023]
Exploring inbetween charts with trajectory-guided sliders for cutout animation |
T Fukusato, A Maejima, T Igarashi, T Yotsukura
[1 Sep., 2023] [MTA 2023]
Enhanced Deep Animation Video Interpolation |
Wang Shen, Cheng Ming, Wenbo Bao, Guangtao Zhai, Li Chen, Zhiyong Gao
[25 Jun., 2022] [arXiv, 2022]
Improving the Perceptual Quality of 2D Animation Interpolation |
Shuhong Chen, Matthias Zwicker
[24 Nov., 2021] [arXiv, 2021]
Deep Animation Video Interpolation in the Wild |
Li Siyao, Shiyu Zhao, Weijiang Yu, Wenxiu Sun, Dimitris N. Metaxas, Chen Change Loy, Ziwei Liu
[6 Apr., 2021] [arXiv, 2021]
Deep Sketch-guided Cartoon Video Inbetweening |
Xiaoyu Li, Bo Zhang, Jing Liao, Pedro V. Sander
[10 Aug., 2020] [arXiv, 2020]
Optical Flow Based Line Drawing Frame Interpolation Using Distance Transform to Support Inbetweenings |
Rei Narita, Keigo Hirakawa, Kiyoharu Aizawa
[26 Aug., 2019] [IEEE, 2019]
DiLight: Digital light table – Inbetweening for 2D animations using guidelines |
Leonardo Carvalho, Ricardo Marroquim, Emilio Vital Brazil
[Jun., 2017] [Elsevier, 2017]
Re:Draw -- Context Aware Translation as a Controllable Method for Artistic Production |
Joao Liborio Cardoso, Francesco Banterle, Paolo Cignoni, Michael Wimmer
[Jan., 2024] [*TBA 2024]
Sprite-from-Sprite: Cartoon Animation Decomposition with Self-supervised Sprite Estimation |
Lvmin Zhang, Tien-Tsin Wong, Yuxin Liu
[Nov., 2022] [ACM 2022]
Toonsynth: example-based synthesis of hand-colored cartoon animations |
M Dvorožnák, W Li, VG Kim, D Sýkora
[Jul., 2018] [TOG 2018]
Globally Optimal Toon Tracking |
Haichao Zhu, Xueting Liu, Tien-Tsin Wong, Pheng-Ann Heng
[11 Jul., 2016] [TOG, 2016]
Fast Leak-Resistant Segmentation for Anime Line Art |
Benjamin Allen, Akinobu Maejima, Ken Anjyo
[Nov.,2024] [SIGGRAPH, 2024]
Stereoscopizing Cel Animations |
Xueting Liu, Xiangyu Mao, Xuan Yang, Linling Zhang, Tien-Tsin Wong
[11 Jul., 2016] [ACM, 2013]
CharacterShot: Controllable and Consistent 4D Character Animation |
Junyao Gao, Jiaxing Li, Wenran Liu, Yanhong Zeng, Fei Shen, Kai Chen, Yanan Sun, Cairong Zhao
[Aug., 2025] [arXiv 2025]
Sketch2Anim: Towards Transferring Sketch Storyboards into 3D Animation |
Lei Zhong, Chuan Guo, Yiming Xie, Jiawei Wang, Changjian Li
[Apr., 2025] [arXiv 2025]
StdGEN: Semantic-Decomposed 3D Character Generation from Single Images |
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Yuze He, Yanning Zhou, Wang Zhao, Zhongkai Wu, Kaiwen Xiao, Wei Yang, Yong-Jin Liu, Xiao Han
[Mar., 2025] [CVPR 2025]
DrawingSpinUp: 3D Animation from Single Character Drawings |
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Jie Zhou, Chufeng Xiao, Miu-Ling Lam, Hongbo Fu
[13 Sep. 2024] [arXiv, 2024]
Toon3D: Seeing Cartoons from a New Perspective |
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Ethan Weber, Riley Peterlinz, Rohan Mathur, Frederik Warburg, Alexei A. Efros, Angjoo Kanazawa
[2024] [Arxiv, 2024]
We encourage animation enthusiasts, researchers, and scholars to contribute to this repository by adding relevant papers, articles, and resources. Your contributions will help build a valuable reference for anyone interested in the art and science of animation.
To contribute, simply fork this repository, make your additions or improvements, and submit a pull request. Please follow the contribution guidelines outlined in the repository's README file.
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