Piet: Facilitating Color Authoring for Motion Graphics Video

Abstract

Motion graphic (MG) videos are effective and compelling for presenting complex concepts through animated visuals; and colors are important to convey desired emotions, maintain visual continuity, and signal narrative transitions. However, current video color authoring workflows are fragmented, lacking contextual previews, hindering rapid theme adjustments, and not aligning with designers’ progressive authoring flows. To bridge this gap, we introduce Piet, the first tool tailored for MG video color authoring. Piet features an interactive palette to visually represent color distributions, support controllable focus levels, and enable quick theme probing via grouped color shifts. We interviewed 6 domain experts to identify the frustrations in current tools and inform the design of Piet. An in-lab user study with 13 expert designers showed that Piet effectively simplified the MG video color authoring and reduced the friction in creative color theme exploration.