ToonComposer: AI-Assisted Cartoon Production and Post-Keyframing

This academic paper introduces ToonComposer, a novel generative AI model designed to streamline cartoon and anime production by unifying the typically separate and labor-intensive stages of inbetweening and colorization into a single "post-keyframing" process. The model leverages a Diffusion Transformer (DiT) architecture, adapted for cartoon aesthetics using a Spatial Low-Rank Adapter (SLRA) to maintain temporal coherence. ToonComposer features a sparse sketch injection mechanism for precise artist control, even with minimal inputs, and region-wise control to automatically generate content in unsketched areas. Extensive evaluations on both synthetic and human-drawn benchmarks, including a new PKBench dataset, demonstrate ToonComposer's superior visual quality, motion consistency, and production efficiency compared to existing methods. The paper highlights its potential to significantly reduce manual workload and enhance flexibility in animation workflows.