Mobile Expressive Renderings: The State of the Art

Mobile applications are incorporating underlying platforms´ pervasiveness in many innovative ways. Performance barriers due to resource constraints are slowly vanishing, and people are increasingly using mobile devices to perform many daily tasks they previously performed on desktop computers. Although a mobile platform´s ability to handle graphics-related tasks requires further investigation, researchers have already made substantial progress. One particular related research area is nonphotorealistic rendering (NPR). NPR involves inherent abstraction, and mobile platforms offer relatively less computing power. So, a convergence of these areas can help deal with producing complex renderings on resource-constrained mobile platforms. This tutorial describes the state of NPR techniques for mobile devices, especially PDAs, tablets, and mobile phones, to motivate the development of efficient mobile NPR apps. In particular, the article addresses NPR advantages, challenges, and solutions. It also discusses mobile NPR visualizations, usability concerns, and future research directions.