Diffusion Curves (Siggraph 2008) - drool!

[Skaven252]

Something very interesting - and commercially potential - from Siggraph:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEVe7vU5WiU

Quicker and simpler than gradient meshes. Xara could step miles ahead of its competition by purchasing this technology and implementing it into Xara Xtreme, no?

Here is the official page of the paper, and you can also download a Windows implementation of the curve drawing tool:
http://artis.imag.fr/Publications/2008/OBWBTS08/