Animated Drawings

AAnimated Drawings is an open-source AI research project developed by Meta AI that brings static hand-drawn characters to life through automatic animation. Designed to make animation accessible to everyone, the platform allows users to upload a photo of a hand-drawn character, review the AI's detected body joints, and generate a short animated sequence within minutes. It removes the technical barriers typically associated with character rigging and animation, making it an engaging tool for educators, families, artists, and researchers alike.

The application uses computer vision models to identify the character's outline, segment the drawing from the background, detect body joints, and automatically build a skeletal rig. Users can adjust the detected joints before selecting from several preset animation styles such as walking, dancing, jumping, or waving. Once processed, the drawing is transformed into a smooth animated character while preserving the original artistic style.

Animated Drawings is based on Meta FAIR's research into computer vision and motion retargeting. The project is also available as open-source code, enabling developers and researchers to build their own animation workflows or extend the underlying technology. Meta has additionally released a large annotated dataset of amateur drawings to support further research in AI-assisted animation and drawing understanding.

The online research demo is available free of charge and runs entirely in the browser without requiring software installation. While it is intended for research and educational purposes rather than commercial production, it provides an impressive demonstration of how AI can automatically animate hand-drawn artwork with minimal user input. Overall, Animated Drawings offers a fun, accessible introduction to AI-powered character animation while showcasing the potential of modern computer vision technologies.