

How the Wall Street journal stipple drawings are made - kevinburke
http://online.wsj.com/video/how-wsj-stipple-drawings-are-made/91955BD8-9F31-4E50-AEF1-26A61B3AA2FB.html

======
swombat
This is the first time I've watched an online video which started with an
advert and decided "You know what, I can't be bothered to watch an advert just
for this."

I have a hunch this is going to become more frequent for me. I've reached my
tiring point. Taking 15 seconds of my time just so I can decide if I want to
skip through the video to find 5 seconds of interesting content is just not
acceptable. Video content is not that special. Would you sit through a
15-second flash ad to see an article? Me neither.

~~~
jrockway
Incidentally, the way the ads are delivered means AdBlock can block them. I
was shocked to discover a few months ago how many ads there are on YouTube. I
had been blocking them without knowing. (Something went bad with my filter
subscription, and I had ads for a few minutes while I googled the fix.)

Honestly, ads are so invasive and easy to block that I'm surprised they work
at all. I can't wait until Microsoft realizes they don't make money from ads
and starts shipping an adblocker with Windows :)

~~~
eru
That would seriously hurt Google.

------
kristiandupont
I appreciate the fact that the drawings are made by real people. Still, I
wonder how much better these actually are compared to a carefully customized
set of photoshop filters.

~~~
catechu
There's certainly an air to having your dot sketch in the WSJ from what I
hear, though I imagine that's faded after its years of remodeling itself and
its time under new ownership. That said, the difficulties with using an
algorithmic filter for creating this stipple effect are, based on my past
attempts:

(1) robustness to lighting conditions

(2) recognition of continuous shapes, such as hats (captured well in [1])

(3) avoiding stipple effect on facial features (e.g. lips, eyes)

I'm not saying it's impossible, just that I haven't been clever enough to
encode it correctly. :)

[1] <http://gazeandstare.com/pic/nolinovak_01.gif>

------
chopsueyar
Known as 'hedcut': <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedcuts>

Some WSJ artists:

<http://www.nolinovak.com/>

<http://nancyjanuzzi.com/>

------
markkat
It seems with some work, you could make a program that imitated this well
enough that it would be difficult to tell the difference. The fact that the
artist noted that it took a human touch suggests to me that they feel a bit
vulnerable.

