1. A method of content-scalable, shape representation and coding for use on an image object, comprising: forming a binary bitmap of the shape of an image object; dividing the binary bitmap into a macroblock array; defining important segments of the shape of an image object and defining non-important segments of the shape of the image object, wherein an important segment is a segment that surrounds a portion of the image object to be represented and coded with greater accuracy than an unimportant segment; coding an important segment with more bits than are used to code a non-important segment; forming a multi-resolution representation of each macroblock, wherein the multi-resolution representations range from a coarse resolution through successive layers of finer resolutions, and wherein the number of finer resolution representations is controlled for each macroblock on the basis of the visual importance of the region represented by the macroblock.