# Shapes2Toon: Generating Cartoon Characters from Simple Geometric Shapes

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2211.02141 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.02141/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 17 of its 41 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 3 Nov 2022.

## Builds on (most cited first, 17 of 17)

- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [Image-to-Image Translation with Conditional Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.07004/) (2016)
- [Conditional Generative Adversarial Nets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1411.1784/) (2014)
- [Colorful Image Colorization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.08511/) (2016)
- [GANs Trained by a Two Time-Scale Update Rule Converge to a Local Nash Equilibrium](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.08500/) (2017)
- [Image-to-Image Translation: Methods and Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.08629/) (2021)
- [SketchyGAN: Towards Diverse and Realistic Sketch to Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.02753/) (2018)
- [CycleGAN, a Master of Steganography](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.02950/) (2017)
- [StrokeGAN: Reducing Mode Collapse in Chinese Font Generation via Stroke Encoding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.08687/) (2020)
- [AutoToon: Automatic Geometric Warping for Face Cartoon Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.02377/) (2020)
- [Fine-Tuning StyleGAN2 For Cartoon Face Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.12445/) (2021)
- [CariGANs: Unpaired Photo-to-Caricature Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.00222/) (2018)
- [Template Matching Advances and Applications in Image Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.07231/) (2016)
- [Auto-painter: Cartoon Image Generation from Sketch by Using Conditional Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.01908/) (2017)
- [RoboCoDraw: Robotic Avatar Drawing with GAN-based Style Transfer and Time-efficient Path Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.05099/) (2019)
- [White-Box Cartoonization Using An Extended GAN Framework](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.04551/) (2021)
- [toon2real: Translating Cartoon Images to Realistic Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.01143/) (2021)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Cartoons are an important part of our entertainment culture. Though drawing a cartoon is not for everyone, creating it using an arrangement of basic geometric primitives that approximates that character is a fairly frequent technique in art. The key motivation behind this technique is that human bodies - as well as cartoon figures - can be split down into various basic geometric primitives. Numerous tutorials are available that demonstrate how to draw figures using an appropriate arrangement of fundamental shapes, thus assisting us in creating cartoon characters. This technique is very beneficial for children in terms of teaching them how to draw cartoons. In this paper, we develop a tool - shape2toon - that aims to automate this approach by utilizing a generative adversarial network which combines geometric primitives (i.e. circles) and generate a cartoon figure (i.e. Mickey Mouse) depending on the given approximation. For this purpose, we created a dataset of geometrically represented cartoon characters. We apply an image-to-image translation technique on our dataset and report the results in this paper. The experimental results show that our system can generate cartoon characters from input layout of geometric shapes. In addition, we demonstrate a web-based tool as a practical implication of our work.