A Sketch-Based Educational System for Learning Chinese Handwriting

Learning Chinese as a Second Language (CSL) is a difficult task for students in English-speaking countries due to the large symbol set and complicated writing techniques. Traditional classroom methods of teaching Chinese handwriting have major drawbacks due to human experts’ bias and the lack of assessment on writing techniques. In this work, we propose a sketch-based educational system to help CSL students learn Chinese handwriting faster and better in a novel way. Our system allows students to draw freehand symbols to answer questions, and uses sketch recognition and AI techniques to recognize, assess, and provide feedback in real time. Results have shown that the system reaches a recognition accuracy of 86% on novice learners’ inputs, higher than 95% detection rate for mistakes in writing techniques, and 80.3% F-measure on the classification between expert and novice handwriting inputs

Image Aesthetic Assessment: A Comparative Study of Hand-Crafted & Deep Learning Models

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Beautifying handwriting characters based on the optimization of strokes and structure

本文提出了一种基于在线手写输入的字形美化方法.首先给定手写体的笔画和拓扑结构的形式化描述;然后借助拓扑结构和笔画的稳定性计算,采用类似轮盘赌的方; 法从用户手写样本中得到最佳的拓扑结构和笔画集,并分别对输入汉字的空间布局和各个笔画进行美化;最后通过分析书法理论中\笔断意连"的几种常见模式,确; 定需要笔断意连的笔画,实现笔画之间的呼应关系优化,从而得到符合书法审美要求的字形.In this paper, we propose a method for beautifying online handwriting; characters. First, we introduce a formalization description of the; handwritings topological structure and strokes. Then, in order to; beautify the spatial arrangement and strokes of the input character, we; capture the writers stability factors for the topology and strokes of; their handwriting, and select a suitable topological structure and; strokes from users handwritten samples, using the roulette wheel method.; In addition, we analyze certain classical stroke connection types as; described in calligraphy theory, and determine which strokes need to; consider visual effects. Finally, we apply curve fitting to optimize the; stroke relations in order to generate a final result that meets the; calligraphy aesthetics requirements.国家自然科学基

Sketch Beautification: Learning Part Beautification and Structure Refinement for Sketches of Man-made Objects

We present a novel freehand sketch beautification method, which takes as input a freely drawn sketch of a man-made object and automatically beautifies it both geometrically and structurally. Beautifying a sketch is challenging because of its highly abstract and heavily diverse drawing manner. Existing methods are usually confined to the distribution of their limited training samples and thus cannot beautify freely drawn sketches with rich variations. To address this challenge, we adopt a divide-and-combine strategy. Specifically, we first parse an input sketch into semantic components, beautify individual components by a learned part beautification module based on part-level implicit manifolds, and then reassemble the beautified components through a structure beautification module. With this strategy, our method can go beyond the training samples and handle novel freehand sketches. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our system with extensive experiments and a perceptive study.Comment: 13 figure

Learning from each other - Building a bridge between two unique cultural approaches to design education.

As China is opening its doors to the world and getting more involved in the global market, it is facing great challenges and competition with other countries and cultures. In order to make Chinese graphic design industry more competitive and help Chinese businesses and industries have better success in the global market, I believed Chinese college-level design educators and students should learn more from advanced American graphic design processes and marketing methods to achieve a better understanding of Western design culture and make communication more successful. At the same time, I believed American college-level graphic design educators and students should become aware of strengths and weaknesses that exist in their own design education and learn from Chinese formal tradition

Graphonomics and your Brain on Art, Creativity and Innovation : Proceedings of the 19th International Graphonomics Conference (IGS 2019 – Your Brain on Art)

[Italiano]: “Grafonomia e cervello su arte, creatività e innovazione”. Un forum internazionale per discutere sui recenti progressi nell'interazione tra arti creative, neuroscienze, ingegneria, comunicazione, tecnologia, industria, istruzione, design, applicazioni forensi e mediche. I contributi hanno esaminato lo stato dell'arte, identificando sfide e opportunità, e hanno delineato le possibili linee di sviluppo di questo settore di ricerca. I temi affrontati includono: strategie integrate per la comprensione dei sistemi neurali, affettivi e cognitivi in ambienti realistici e complessi; individualità e differenziazione dal punto di vista neurale e comportamentale; neuroaesthetics (uso delle neuroscienze per spiegare e comprendere le esperienze estetiche a livello neurologico); creatività e innovazione; neuro-ingegneria e arte ispirata dal cervello, creatività e uso di dispositivi di mobile brain-body imaging (MoBI) indossabili; terapia basata su arte creativa; apprendimento informale; formazione; applicazioni forensi. / [English]: “Graphonomics and your brain on art, creativity and innovation”. A single track, international forum for discussion on recent advances at the intersection of the creative arts, neuroscience, engineering, media, technology, industry, education, design, forensics, and medicine. The contributions reviewed the state of the art, identified challenges and opportunities and created a roadmap for the field of graphonomics and your brain on art. The topics addressed include: integrative strategies for understanding neural, affective and cognitive systems in realistic, complex environments; neural and behavioral individuality and variation; neuroaesthetics (the use of neuroscience to explain and understand the aesthetic experiences at the neurological level); creativity and innovation; neuroengineering and brain-inspired art, creative concepts and wearable mobile brain-body imaging (MoBI) designs; creative art therapy; informal learning; education; forensics

Philosophical dimensions of Tang calligraphic treatises (7th-8th centuries)

This study discusses and explores Tang calligraphic theories from the 7th to 8th centuries in China from three perspectives: the definition of calligraphy’s position from the perspective of Confucianism, aesthetical concepts originating from Yi Jing, and major formulae provided by Taoist thinking. The purpose of this project is to study how Chinese traditional cultures influenced Tang calligraphic theories, and therefore to aid understanding of the profound implications of the Tang calligraphic treatises. The far-reaching aim of this proposal is to arrive at a historical understanding of the significance of traditional culture in the field of art practice and theory, to reveal the dominant paradigm of aesthetic norms and artistic conventions, and ultimately to constitute a scientific theoretical framework of Chinese aesthetics. The Confucian school had recovered and began to flourish at the beginning of Tang particularly when Five Confucian Classics and their Annotations were issued in 653 A.D. They were treated by the court as the imperial examination compendiums. The majority of artists and theorists in calligraphy were Confucian scholars in Tang, the same as other types of arts, for example literature, music and painting. Calligraphy was an important means to assess moral calibre; theorists believed calligraphy had an equal status with rituals and music. It seems that calligraphy served as a didactic tool for influencing ethics and desirable virtues, which also promoted the formation of the concept of harmony in calligraphic aesthetics. Yi Jing, the first Classic among Five Classics or Thirteen Classics, played a more significant role in calligraphic aesthetics than in painting, presumably because calligraphy has more abstraction in dots and lines than painting. Theorists regarded trigram and hexagram as a root of calligraphy based on the fact that calligraphy had an affinity with Yi Jing’s images and its symbols. People could see the features of change in the strokes, structures, layout and stylistic forms of calligraphy through trigram and hexagram. One especially admires eminent calligraphers in the way they broke away from the constraints of conventional techniques and styles. This notion of change from Yi Jing embraces the reconciliation of hardness and softness in terms of calligraphy aesthetics as well. Calligraphy appears very abstract. Tang calligraphy theorists shed light on the dark (xuan) feature from the perspective of Taoism. They defined calligraphy as Shu Dao implicitly or explicitly. Calligraphy had some characteristics such as equable (yi), inaudible (xi), subtle (wei), dark (xuan), deep (shen) and inactive (wuwei), which the Dao also had. Taoism supplied major formulae, i.e. methodological ideas, through which one can see the abstraction (abstract nature) of calligraphy. The notion of Shu Dao as it pertains to Daoism implies calligraphy should follow the law of nature, thus it was thought to be better to practice in a natural way rather than a forced way, i.e. in naturalness, non-purposefulness or even spontaneity. According to Neo-Taoism, each individual had his own innate tendencies (innate nature), which was preordained, unchangeable, and could not be supplemented. As a result, one should follow their own innate tendencies while practising calligraphy. It was suggested that one could develop and perfect one’s own personal style by following their own inborn nature. Among the aforementioned, some viewpoints are debateable, such as the relationship between calligraphy and morality; the concepts of harmony, change, reconciliation of hardness and softness, taking the law from nature, following one’s innate tendencies and so forth are meaningful in the history of Chinese calligraphy