DataToon: Drawing Dynamic Network Comics With Pen + Touch Interaction

Comics are an entertaining and familiar medium for presenting compelling stories about data. However, existing visualization authoring tools do not leverage this expressive medium. In this paper, we seek to incorporate elements of comics into the construction of data-driven stories about dynamic networks. We contribute DataToon, a flexible data comic storyboarding tool that blends analysis and presentation with pen and touch interactions. A storyteller can use DataToon rapidly generate visualization panels, annotate them, and position them within a canvas to produce a visually compelling narrative. In a user study, participants quickly learned to use DataToon for producing data comics.

Examples

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Tutorial

Interaction Design

Load data

Inspecting Patterns Detected from the Dataset

Generate Visualization Panels, Filter and Annotate the Panels

Extracting Network Structure Patterns from a Panel

Preparing for Building a Comic

Writng a Storyboard

Start Filling the Storyboard

Generate Labels and Create a Time Caption

Highlight Relationships

Customize Visual Representations

Reducing the Gutter