One of the issues that has long been a problem for diversity in entertainment media is that creatives often have not been trained or had the tools to effectively portray people of color.
A new algorithm that can digitally generate coiled hair images has been created by Haomiao Wu, Alvin Shi, A.M. Darke, and Theodore Kim. Image from Yale Engineering.
Which is why it is so exciting to see new tools for effectively animating Afro-textured hair in films. According to computer science professor Dr. Theodore Kim, who has previously worked for Pixar Research, “If you do a deep dive into the technical literature… you see that all of the supposedly foundational papers on this topic … feature just straight hair.”
Kim tells the WaPo that his colleagues at Pixar often had to put in large amounts of time on manual animation of Black hair because the existing tools couldn’t handle it. (Though the WaPo article doesn’t mention it, Dr. Kim has won two Technical Achievement Academy Awards for his work on computer animation techniques, the first in 2012, the second 10 years later in 2023. Also worth noting that in addition to studying computer science as an undergrad at Cornell University, Dr. Kim also had a concentration in English literature. STEM also needs humanities! )
You will need to read the article to get a handle on what the researchers needed to do to make curly hair work with animation algorithms, but essentially it was moving from a model that used straight lines to a model that dealt with three-dimensional helixes.
Early concept art from Hair Love as seen on Vashti Harrison’s Instagram account.
Learning about Dr. Kim’s work reminded me about one of my all-time favorite short animated films: the Oscar-winning Hair Love. Hair Love was the brainchild of former NFL player Matthew Cherry, who wanted to turn the online trend of viral videos of Black fathers styling their children’s hair into an inspirational (and fun!) animated film that celebrated natural hair. In the short, a Black father is struggling to style his young daughter’s hair before heading out of the house.
If you have any interest in animation and how an animated short can get made outside of the major studios, read the article linked above and watch the complete film below.
Watching the dad’s efforts with his daughter’s hair will help you understand exactly what makes curly hair so challenging for animators. (And yet, the crew for Hair Love, which included Pixar and Sony Animation alums, managed to animate all the hair in the film beautifully.)