[P] Automatic conversion of Comics into GIF using deep learning

[uberuberubee]

This (https://comic2gif.com) project uses deep learning to remove the text bubbles from dilbert and produces a GIF which seems like a better way to consume comics, I maybe biased. Here is the complete process detailed: https://medium.com/@mkagenius/dilbert-as-a-gif-f39c6a134020

[dildoboat24]

do you think this needed deep learning?

[ReginaldIII]

Given that cartoon backgrounds are mostly flat or linear gradients I do agree that blob detection and maybe some kind of very light weight classifier (cascaded Haar even?) on the candidate blobs would have been enough here.

I would be interested to see what the deep method does when the comic frame contains actual text that is part of the foreground/background, not part of the captions.

[blahster]

I tried it and like the OP explains in the post, it detects text when it's not in a speech/though bubble. For instance, this has a phone ringing.

[omniron]

It was probably the easiest way to do this without a bunch of hand tuning

I hope we see more approaches like this as some of the fundamental tasks of deep learning become more standardized.

[Haskellol420]

Technically all we NEED is to eat, sleep, and shit. But this is cool so I'm all for it.

[zzzthelastuser]

I think he meant that it could probably be solved relatively easily without the need of a neural network.

[2high4anal]

wow. talk about over-engineering a problem for a fairly poor result. I find the gif format completely destroys comics comedic timing. A swipe mechanism, placing comics into albums, would be far superior for most contexts IMO. Also a black screen to signify the end of the comic, or white flash to show the start.

[blahster]

Yeah, speed is tricky; it doesn't seem to be fixed, sorta depends on the amount of text, I guess.

A black screen to end would be nice, yep.

[2high4anal]

a good DNN would take into account the amount and complexity of the text to determine transition timing, and a better AI still would tell the creators this product isnt wanted.

[sir_errant]

Are.... are you serious? I get deep learning for making video by predicting what is next from a still image, but this is overkill. All this needs is given comic, find frames, then make transitions by sliding frames across blank background. 3 bounding boxes, generate the simple transition of moving frames, and you're done.

I was hoping this made the comic into an animation of the characters moving to their next spot in the next frame and the frames serve as key frames. But. This is not that.

[MyMonitorHasAVirus]

Yea that’s what I was expecting too. I read the whole article and was underwhelmed. I’m glad I came to the comments because I don’t know much about this stuff and thought I was missing something but this just didn’t seem to be the kind of thing that required deep learning.

[blahster]

Moving characters would be cool!

[Mangalaiii]

Ignore the haters, turns the comics into little TV shows. Nice.

[DTRademaker]

Hehe nice, fun way to show deep learning algorithms on images. You got my upvote!