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animāre
Foundational Techniques for Malleable Tools for a Reciprocal Anime Co-creation Environment

Jun Kato
Akinobu Maejima
Yuki Koyama
2025
Keywords: Anime, Creativity

Summary

animāre (pronounced ah-nee-MAH-ray) comes from the Latin "to give life," which is also the root of the word "animation." This project sets anime creation as a key application domain to develop foundational techniques for malleable tools and realize an environment where anime creators and tool developers can form reciprocal relationships.

This project is being advanced in collaboration with Co-PIs Maejima (OLM Digital Inc.) and Koyama (The University of Tokyo). The overall project website is under preparation, and this page mainly serves to publicize the related achievements of the Kato group.

Relevant projects

Anime SIG

Organized by experts from industry and academia, this SIG invited participants to the emerging area of anime research with the aim to open up a new alley for human-computer interaction (HCI) research through collective discussion on potential directions and community fostering of anime-interested researchers.

2025
Griffith

Griffith is a web-based authoring tool for Japanese animation (anime) storyboards.

2019-2025CHI '24Anime Creativity

I have also organized and hosted related events.

A Workshop on Creativity support for Hand-drawn Art Practices
February 10-12, 2025
R&D for Anime Production: Collaborative Cultural Craft of Art, Science, and Engineering (ACM SIGGRAPH Asia 2024)
December 6, 2024
Special Interest Group on Creativity and Cultures in Computing (ACM CHI 2023)
April 24, 2023
R&D for Anime Production: State-of-the-Art and Future Prospects (ACM SIGGRAPH Asia 2021)
December 16, 2021

Publications

The following is a full list of past publications (including non-archival ones).

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Anime SIG: Researching Japanese Animation From Technical, Cultural, and Industrial Perspectives

2025CHI EA '25Creativity Support Environments
Jun Kato, Yuki Koyama, Akinobu Maejima, Ryotaro Mihara, Katie Seaborn
Proceedings of the Extended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Paper PDFCopy BibTeX

Power, Culture, and Sustainability in Creativity Support Tools: A Post-growth Perspective

2025Creativity Support Environments
Jun Kato, Yakura Hiromu
Advancing Post-growth HCI Workshop, the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
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Super Kawaii Vocalics: Amplifying the "Cute" Factor in Computer Voice

2025CHI '25
Yuto Mandai, Katie Seaborn, Tomoyasu Nakano, Xin Sun, Yijia Wang, Jun Kato
Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
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A Practical Style Transfer Pipeline for 3D Animation: Insights from Production R&D

2024SA '24ACM SIGGRAPH Asia '24 Technical Communications Best Paper Award
Hideki Todo, Yuki Koyama, Kunihiro Sakai, Akihiro Komiya, Jun Kato
SIGGRAPH Asia 2024 Technical Communications
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Griffith: A Storyboarding Tool Designed with Japanese Animation Professionals

2024CHI '24Griffith
Jun Kato, Kenta Hara, Nao Hirasawa
Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
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On the Relationship between HCI Researchers and Creators---Or How I Became a Toolsmith

2023Invited articleCreativity Support Environments
Jun Kato
XRDS 29(4), pp.26-31
Slides PDFCopy BibTeX

Lights, Animation, Interaction! – Synchronizing Music with Computer-controlled Visuals in Live Performances

2023SAS 34TextAlive
Jun Kato
Society for Animation Studies 34th Annual Conference: The Animated Environment
Slides PDFResolve DOICopy BibTeX

Special Interest Group on Creativity and Cultures in Computing

2023CHI EA '23Creativity Support Environments
Jun Kato, Jonas Frich, Zhicong Lu, Jennifer Jacobs, Kumiyo Nakakoji, Celine Latulipe
Extended Abstracts of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Slides PDFCopy BibTeX

Past, Present, and Future of “Toolsmiths” in Japanese Animation

2022SAS '22Griffith
Jun Kato
Society for Animation Studies 2022 Conference: Animation Unlocked
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Griffith: Prototype of A Web-based Tool for Authoring Japanese Anime Storyboards

2022ISID '22ISID '22 Best Poster AwardGriffith
Jun Kato, Kazuya Murata, Kenta Hara, Satoko Okuno, Tetsushi Suzuki, Nao Hirasawa
Slides PDFCopy BibTeX

Past, Present, and Future of Storyboarding in Japanese Animation

2021SAS '21Griffith
Jun Kato, Ryotaro Mihara, Nao Hirasawa
Society for Animation Studies 2021 Conference: Animated Energies
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Research on Anime Storyboards for Individual and Collaborative Creativity

2021ISID '21ISID '21 Best Poster AwardGriffith
Jun Kato, Ryotaro Mihara Mihara, Kazuya Murata, Kenta Hara, Nao Hirasawa

Media coverage

CGWORLD.jp
アニメづくりのR&D座談会 2025 No.2／R&Dの火を絶やさぬための組織戦略
June 26, 2025
CGWORLD vol.322（2025年6月号） p.74-79
アニメづくりのR&D座談会 2025
May 10, 2025
4Gamer.net
［CEDEC 2023］ゲームとは異なる文化を持つアニメ業界からR&Dを学ぶ。研究開発をテーマにしたセッション「アニメR&Dの最前線」をレポート
August 24, 2023
CGWORLD vol.283（2022年3月号） p.50-55
＜特集＞ アニメ制作の現在と未来. SIGGRAPH Asia 2021セッションレポート「アニメづくりのR&D：現状と今後」
February 10, 2022
アニメハック
制作もプロデュースもテクノロジーが勝負　「ACTF2019」から見えるアニメの現在
February 8, 2019

Revision history

9/14/2025
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