The present invention relates to image creation and/or editing, and more particular to a toy having the ability to color and display images.
One type of image creation and/or editing program geared toward children is a coloring book program. A child using such a coloring book program typically adds color to a predefined collection of line art drawings. For example, in some coloring book programs, a child may select a line art drawing from a predefine collection, select an enclosed region of the selected drawing, and select a color to add to the selected region. In response to such selections, the coloring book program may fill the selected region with the selected color. Other coloring book programs attempt to more closely mimic the process of coloring a page in a conventional coloring book. In such color programs, a user selects a color for a brush or other coloring tool and colors a selected line art drawing by moving the brush across the drawing via an input device such as a mouse, drawing pad, or touch screen.
Many children find such coloring book programs entertaining. However, in many aspects, such coloring book programs do not take advantage of the platform to deliver an enhanced experience. As a result, many coloring book programs add little to the conventional coloring book experience.
Aspects of the present invention are directed to methods, systems, and apparatus, substantially as shown in and/or described in connection with at least one of the figures and as set forth more completely in the claims.
These and other advantages, aspects and novel features of the present invention, as well as details of illustrative aspects thereof, will be more fully understood from the following description and drawings.
Aspects of the invention may be found in a method, apparatus, and computer readable storage medium that permit coloring line art drawings and/or exhibiting three-dimensional aspects of such drawings in response to spatial movement (e.g., up, down, left, right, tilting, shaking, etc.) of the computing device itself. In some embodiments, an electronic tablet device may execute instructions of a coloring book program and/or three-dimensional rendering program in order to permit a user to color a drawing and/or display three-dimensional aspects of a drawing via spatial movement of the electronic tablet device. In particular, the electronic tablet device may provide a canvas upon which is displayed a line art drawing, colors to apply to the drawing, and/or tools to apply such colors to the drawing. The electronic tablet device may further include an accelerometer or other type of motion sensor in order to detect a spatial movement of the electronic tablet device. In response to such detected movement, the electronic tablet device may move aspects of the drawing in relation to other aspects of the drawing to effect a three-dimensional effect. In this manner, background portions of the drawing that were hidden or obscured by other portions of the drawing in the foreground may be revealed based upon the spatial movement of the electronic tablet device.
Referring now to
As shown, the tablet 100 may include a housing 110, a controller 120, a storage device 125, a display device 130, a touch sensor 140, a motion sensor 150, push buttons 160a-f, and a speaker 170. The housing 110 may include various rubber, plastic, metal, and/or other materials suitable for (i) encasing electrical components of the tablet 100, such as those depicted in
The controller 120 may include processing circuitry and control circuitry. In particular, the processing circuitry may include a central processing unit, a micro-processor, a micro-controller, a programmable gate array, and/or other processing circuitry capable of processing various input signals such as, for example, input signals from touch sensor 140, motion sensor 150, and push buttons 160a-f. The controller 120 may be further configured to generate various output signals such as, for example, video output signals for the display device 130 and audio output signals for the speaker 170.
The storage device 125 may include one or more computer readable storage media such as, for example, flash memory devices, hard disk devices, compact disc media, DVD media, EEPROMs, etc suitable for storing instructions and data. In some embodiments, the storage device 125 may store an enhanced coloring book program comprising instructions that, in response to being executed by the controller 120, provide a user of the tablet 100 with the ability to color line art drawings and/or exhibit three-dimensional aspects of such drawings in response to spatial movement (e.g., up, down, left, right, tilting, shaking, etc.) of the tablet 100 itself.
The display device 130 may present or display graphical and textual content in response to one or more signals received from the controller 120. To this end, the display device 130 may include an light-emitting diode (LED) display, an electroluminescent display (ELD), an electronic paper (E Ink) display, a plasma display panel (PDP), a liquid crystal display (LCD), a thin-film transistor display (TFT), an organic light-emitting diode display (OLED), or a display device using another type of display technology.
As shown, the display device 130 may span a considerable portion of a front surface or side 102 of the tablet 100 and may be surrounded by a bezel 112 of the housing 110. Thus, a user may hold the tablet 100 by the bezel 112 and still view content presented by the display device 130. Moreover, the housing 110 may further include a stand (not shown) that pops-out from a back surface of the tablet 100. The stand may permit the user to stand the tablet 100 on a table or another horizontal surface in order to view content presented by the display device 130.
The touch sensor 140 may overlay the display device 130 and provide the controller 120 with input signals indicative of location (e.g., a point, coordinate, area, region, etc.) at which a user has touched the screen 140 with a finger, stylus, and/or other object. Based upon touch input signals, the controller 120 may identify a position on the display device 130 corresponding to the touched location on the touch sensor 140. To this end, the touch sensor 140 may be implemented using various different touch sensor technologies such as, for example, resistive, surface acoustic wave, capacitive, infrared, optical imaging, dispersive signal, acoustic pulse recognition, etc. Moreover, in some embodiments, the tablet 100 may include a touch sensor, in addition to or instead of the touch sensor 140, that does not overlay the display device 130. In such embodiments, the touch sensor may be a separate device that operably couples to the controller 120 of the tablet 100 via a wired or wireless connection.
As shown in
Besides the touch sensor 140 and motion sensor 150, the tablet 100 may further include push buttons 160a-f in order to provide the controller 120 with additional input signals. Various embodiments of the tablet 100 may include additional and/or fewer additional input devices such as push buttons 160a-f, switches, sliders, etc. in order to provide the controller 120 with further input signals. However, it should be appreciated that many if not all of such push buttons 160a-f and/or other input devices may be eliminated. The functions performed by such eliminated input devices may be implemented by the touch sensor 140 and/or motions sensor 150 or may be simply removed from some embodiments.
The push buttons 160a-f may be seated in housing 110 and configured to provide controller 120 with an input signal in response to being activated. As such, push buttons 160a-f may provide a user of the tablet 100 with the ability to trigger certain functionality of the tablet 100 by merely actuating the respective button. For example, the push buttons 160a-f may include a power button 160a, a home button 160b, a help button 160c, a volume-up button 160d, and volume down button 160e, and a brightness button 160f. The power button 160a may toggle the tablet 100 between powered-on and powered-off states. The volume-up and volume-down buttons 160d, 160e may respectively cause the controller 120 to increase and decrease audio output signals to the speaker 170. The brightness button 160f may cause the controller 120 to adjust a brightness level of the display device 130. The home button 160b may request the controller 120 to present a home or default menu on the display device 130 and the help button 160c may request the controller 120 to present help information via the display device 130 and/or the speaker 170.
Referring now to
In the interest of brevity, the specification and claims may generally refer to touching a control or other item depicted on the display device 130. However, it should be appreciated that the user's finger, stylus, or other object does not in fact touch the graphical representation of the control or item depicted on the display device 130. Instead, the finger, stylus, or other object may contact a protective coating, covering, or possibly the touch sensor 140 itself which is positioned over of the display device 130. The touch sensor 140, in response to such touching, may generate input signals indicative of a location (e.g., point, coordinate, area, region, etc.) associated with the touch on the touch sensor 140. The controller 120 may then determine based upon the input signals which displayed item the user was attempting to touch.
In one embodiment, the main screen 300 may include control buttons such as a new page button 301, an activate button 302, an undo button 304, and a music on/off button 305. A user may touch the new page button 301 to select a new multilayer image from a collection of predefined multilayer images. A user may touch the activate button 302 to activate a three-dimensional effect of the selected multilayer image. When activated, a user may tilt the tablet left, right, up, or down to cause one or more layers of the displayed multilayer image to move in relation to movement of the electronic tablet device 100 to simulate a three-dimensional effect as described in greater detail below.
The user may touch the undo button 304 to undo the most recent change made to the image 330. In some embodiments, the undo button 304 may enable the user to undo or backtrack multiple changes to the image 330. The user may also touch the music on/off button 305 to toggle background music between an on state and an off state.
The main screen 300 may further include a color selection tool, which in one embodiment, includes a plurality of paint buckets 306-311 that each display a different color of paint that may be applied to the displayed multilayer image. In particular, a user may touch the a paint bucket 306-311 to select a corresponding color of paint. In one embodiment, only a portion of the available colors are displayed at a time. A user may scroll the paint buckets 306-311 up and down via the touch sensor 140 to reveal additional color selections. After selecting a paint bucket 306-311 and its corresponding color of paint, the user may touch a region of the displayed multilayer image to apply the selected color to the selected region.
A method 400 of coloring a multilayer image 330 is shown in
As shown in
Due to this display order, images in upper layers may overlap and/or hide regions or portions of regions in lower layers. For example, as shown in
Accordingly, when the user touches a point of the multilayer image 330, the point generally corresponds to a point in each layer 340-1 to 340N. The images 350-1 to 3502 may be implemented with one or more predefined fillable regions that may be selected and filled with a selected color. However, not all layers 340-1 to 340N may have a fillable region associated with the touched point. A particular presentation of the multilayer image 330 may include visible regions, hidden regions, and regions having both visible portions, and hidden portions. See, e.g., presentation 360C of
In response to selecting the fillable region, the controller 120 at 470 may then fill the selected region with the selected color. In one embodiment, the coloring book program fills both the visible and the hidden portions of the selected region with the selected color.
Such filling of hidden portions enhances the three-dimensional effect presented by the tablet 100 in response to spatial movement of the tablet 100. In particular, as shown in method 600 of
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As further shown in
From
More specifically, as shown in
Referring back to
At 640, the controller 120 may adjust an offset for each layer 340-1 to 340N of the multilayer image 330 based upon the new view point. In particular, the controller 120 may maintain the reference point 372-1 to 3722 of each window 370-1 to 3702 on the view line 396. As such, the controller 120 may adjust or shift each window 370-1 to 3702 with respect to a stationary window 3700 associated with the origin layer 3400 based on spatial movement of the tablet 100 and its associated depth along the z-axis.
The controller 120 at 650 may generate one or more output signals which cause the display device 130 to display an updated presentation 360C of the multilayer image 330. In particular, the controller 120 may generate a composite presentation of the layers 340-1 to 340N that accounts for the shift in view windows 370-1 to 3702 and regions of upper layers overlapping and hiding regions of lower layers. In this manner, the controller 120 may cause the display device 130 to display a presentation 360C of the image 330 that is based on the associated depth and the associated offset for each layer 340-1 to 340N of the multilayer image 330.
It should be appreciated that the above shifting of the two-dimension regions of the layers 340-1 to 340N in response to spatial movement of the tablet 100 generates a three-dimensional effect. In particular, a user may tilt the tablet 100 to explore the image 330 and uncover aspects that are hidden by other aspects of the image 330 that are in the foreground. For example, the image 330 may have a pirate theme in which a treasure chest that is hidden or partially hidden behind an island is revealed when the tablet 100 is tilted in an appropriate manner.
Various embodiments of the invention are described herein by way of example and not by way of limitation in the accompanying figures. For clarity of illustration, exemplary elements illustrated in the figures may not necessarily be drawn to scale. In this regard, for example, the dimensions of some of the elements may be exaggerated relative to other elements to provide clarity. Furthermore, where considered appropriate, reference labels have been repeated among the figures to indicate corresponding or analogous elements.
Moreover, certain embodiments may be implemented as a plurality of instructions on a computer readable storage medium such as, for example, flash memory devices, hard disk devices, compact disc media, DVD media, EEPROMs, etc. Such instruction when executed by a electronic tablet device or other computing device, may enable the creation and/or editing of images via spatial movement (e.g., up, down, left, right, tilting, shaking, etc.) of the computing device itself.
One skilled in the art would readily appreciate that many modifications and variations of the disclosed embodiments are possible in light of the above teachings. Thus, it is to be understood that, within the scope of the appended claims, aspects of the disclosed embodiments may be practiced in a manner other than as described above.