Kisekae Set System

Kisekae Set System (commonly known as KiSS) is a blending of art with computers originally designed to allow creation of virtual "paper dolls". Kisekae is short for "kisekae ningyou"; a Japanese term meaning "dress-up dolls". Unlike "computer art" which creates or displays traditional art via a computer, KiSS uses the computer as the medium, allowing the art to be not only animated, but also interactive.

KiSS is an Open standard which has to some extent been implemented on nearly every possible platform, including several PDAs. It has also been implemented in Java and on the web.

KiSS originated in Japan in 1991 with "dolls" based on shōjo manga characters.

The original dolls, a series of simple, static images, could be moved about and layered on top of one another to look as if the doll image was wearing the clothing. Using computer graphics had the advantage over traditional paper dolls in allowing multiple layers to move in unison, including visually separate pieces, giving an illusion of depth not possible with physical paper.

The initial viewer software was designed for NEC PC-9800 series using a palette of 16 colours to display the doll. Shortly after, an enhanced standard was put forward (General Specification 2 known as 'KiSS/GS2') which included support for VGA cards and 256 or multiple 16 colour palettes. This standard is still the basis of KiSS, but several additional specifications have been incorporated into viewers since then, in particular "French KiSS", generally called FKiSS, for controlling interactivity and animation and "Cherry KiSS" (i.e. CKiSS) for 32-bit "true" colour support.

By the late 1990s KiSS had spread from the Japanese BBS communities internationally via the Internet with artists creating "dolls", programmers creating support tools, and fans appearing worldwide.

Note that although KiSS sets are often referred to generically as 'dolls' they are not confined to dress-up — in fact they can be anything and there are "build-your-own" faces, wedding cakes, dollhouses, battleships, as well as puzzles, games and much more. Nonetheless such "unusual" sets are sometimes referred to as aberrant KiSS.

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