Making Beautiful Embroidery for “Frozen 2”

Abstract

In Walt Disney Animation Studios’ “Frozen 2”, costumes play an important part in the character design and story. Intricate embroidery on the costumes captures integral components of the characters’ personalities, symbolized by the different shapes and patterns. One of the challenges for the character team was the realization of the intricate embroidery work that is essential to the character design. We present a new curve-based approach to procedurally generate complex embroidery that can take 2D visual designs represented by line strokes and produce renderable curves. The curves deform along with the costumes while staying flattened on their surfaces. The method is straightforward and intuitive. Authoring and visualization are fast and easy, allowing quick iterations without a large amount of manual work from artists when a design changes. The method supports free-form stitches with threads of various widths, colors and opacities, enabling a wide range of embroidery styles.