ToonCrafter

What is ToonCrafter?

ToonCrafter is an open-source AI-powered video interpolation model designed specifically for cartoon and anime-style animations. It enables illustrators, animators, and content creators to generate smooth motion sequences between two input images or keyframes. Instead of manually drawing every frame, users simply provide a starting and ending image—ToonCrafter then uses AI to interpolate the in-between frames, drastically reducing production time. Target audience: Ideal for animation studios, digital illustrators, manga artists, hobbyist animators, and educators teaching animation workflows. Core functionality: By leveraging deep learning models trained on animated content, ToonCrafter intelligently generates intermediate frames that preserve style, proportions, and artistic integrity. It can be used for creating short animated scenes, morphs, transitions, and fluid motion effects without requiring frame-by-frame sketching. Key features: Open-source codebase hosted on GitHub, model weights available on Hugging Face, and a live demo that allows users to test 2-second interpolated animations directly in the browser. The tool is lightweight and developer-friendly, allowing for local installation and fine-tuning with custom datasets. Benefits and advantages: ToonCrafter dramatically speeds up the animation process for 2D projects by automating the most labor-intensive part—drawing in-between frames. This allows animators to focus more on style and storytelling. It also serves as a learning tool for those exploring AI-assisted creativity in animation. Since the project is open-source, developers can contribute improvements, adapt the model to new animation styles, or integrate it into larger animation pipelines. Integrations: ToonCrafter works with standard image formats and can be integrated into animation tools or used via command line. It supports usage through Hugging Face's demo space, GitHub for deployment, and custom model training pipelines for specific art styles or studios.