FlipSketch: Flipping Static Drawings to Text-Guided Sketch Animations
Authors: name: Hmrishav Bandyopadhyay, name: Yi-Zhe Song

Sketch animations offer a powerful medium for visual storytelling, from
simple flip-book doodles to professional studio productions. While traditional
animation requires teams of skilled artists to draw key frames and in-between
frames, existing automation attempts still demand significant artistic effort
through precise motion paths or keyframe specification. We present FlipSketch,
a system that brings back the magic of flip-book animation -- just draw your
idea and describe how you want it to move! Our approach harnesses motion priors
from text-to-video diffusion models, adapting them to generate sketch
animations through three key innovations: (i) fine-tuning for sketch-style
frame generation, (ii) a reference frame mechanism that preserves visual
integrity of input sketch through noise refinement, and (iii) a dual-attention
composition that enables fluid motion without losing visual consistency. Unlike
constrained vector animations, our raster frames support dynamic sketch
transformations, capturing the expressive freedom of traditional animation. The
result is an intuitive system that makes sketch animation as simple as doodling
and describing, while maintaining the artistic essence of hand-drawn animation.