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Dry Eraser/White Board With Hand
Hey guys!
I am looking for different ways to create a dry eraser/whiteboard effect like in this video (just after the title sequence): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJcI want to include a hand drawing it out, so was thinking maybe I could record a bunch of different motions of the arm on a green screen, then composite it over the white board. Can you think any better idea’s?
Seems like there are so many ways this could be done. Trying to find the most effective.With the actual white board drawing, I’m thinking maybe I can take a extremely high rez shot of the finished piece, then path mask it to create a drawing effect.
I dont know I’m a little at loss as to where to start. Any suggestions or idea’s would be greatly appreciated. Will try to return the favor, how ever I can. Thanks Creative Cow!
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10 Replies
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I think that you’re on the right track:
Start with the finished artwork, and then reveal it with strokes that match the general movement of a hand that you composite on top.———————————————————————————————————
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You might be able to animate the hand convincingly in that style with just a few stills and the Puppet tool [link].
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
Did a test last night for just the stroke’s on the artwork, and it looks great. Now I gotta try the hand over it. Im just worried about it being a ridiculous amount of editing to get the hand matched up with the strokes being relieved. Maybe I can use the angle of the hand to my advantage to block the view of the strokes? It is also going to be time lapsed extremely fast to match up with the voice over so maybe it wont matter much.
I don’t know if the puppet tool will be natural enough, as it bends pixels and such. but….. that might save me from trying to get a million different stroke movement footage, of the hand to match up with the drawing…. If that makes sense….
Its funny, because a lot of people are asking how they made these video online, and everyone has their own idea on how to approach it. Some say its all live footage, some say its all After Effects. Guess I’m just trying to find the best way for me.
Any other suggestions? I really appreciate input, or thoughts, will keep you all updated on if this works or not.
Thanks again CC! -
[Amanda Smith] “I don’t know if the puppet tool will be natural enough, as it bends pixels and such. but….. that might save me from trying to get a million different stroke movement footage, of the hand to match up with the drawing…. If that makes sense….”
The puppet tool takes a little practice, but you might be surprised how realistic you can make it. A recurring theme on this forum yesterday was that motion blur reduces the need for accuracy — in this case, time remapping reduces the need for accuracy.
If you can actually do a practical shoot, you might be able to work backwards. Create your artwork digitally, then print it with chroma-key green ink. Have your talent trace the artwork with a non-functional pen. Key out the actual artwork, and reveal your own art as you are doing now — just make sure your strokes match the talent’s. As with any effects shot, you’d certainly want to test an approach like this before committing to it. It may or may not work, and it may not be worth the work it creates — lighting and camera work will be a challenge!
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
Hmmm, That’s a really interesting idea. I was tinkering around with the idea of tracing it and keying it out in my head. If this fails I might have to try something like that. Thank you for your thoughts.
Yeah, the puppet tool dose seem to take some practice. Worked with it on simple objects, but not much else. Hmmmmm….
Any thoughts on how they actually did this as a whole? Thanks again!
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[Amanda Smith] “Any thoughts on how they actually did this as a whole?”
You could always do it live [link] — you just need the right talent.
My work is all post, and that’s probably how I’d approach this; either as you suggested, with some green screen shots of the hand (you could stabilize the footage based on the pen point to make animation easier), or with the puppet tool as I described above.
With the puppet tool, I might try rigging the hand with some expressions controlling the pins to help me generate more complex motion with fewer keyframes, rather than animating each pin manually. You could also look into motion sketch [link] to speed animation along.
As an aside, I find this “illustrator’s hand” approach an interesting throwback to animation in the 1920s and 1930s — was it Felix the Cat?
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
[Dave LaRonde] “I’m going to guess that it was done much as Walter described with a hand tracing on a 2-tone green board. As I look at a still frame, I think I see a little green spill on the hand. Considering how nice the piece looks overall, that telltale green spill lead me to think it might have been a Right Royal Pain to pull a good key, and they could only do so much spill suppression before it started adversely affecting the skin tones.”
It might also be possible to do green content on white paper to reduce spill, then either luma key the paper out, or Rotobrush it.
Any way you do this, it’s a lot of work and a lot of testing.
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
Yeah, I tried it with a still shot of the hand making wiggle motions on the green screen and animated the whole arm comp to move with the stroke. Worked really well! Though its pretty time consuming.
How could I parent the hand comp movement to the stroke? that would be freaking awesome.
Sadly, I am shooting on a DSLR camera. Cant do much about that, because thats all I got. I’ll just have to light it the best I can. Thank you so much guys. really. =)
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Hi,
Having attempted this myself with a completely different method – filmed live with different sections stiched together – I can attest to how difficult it is!
Your thread has inspired me. I was starting to think I wouldn’t be able to do it on a small budget, but from the sounds of it, you’ve had some success doing it the way listed above.
It’s been 7 months since this post started so I guess your a master at it now 😉
How did you do it in the end?
I’m thinking:
1. Draw the whole thing. Take a high resolution picture (still SLR camera).
2. Animate a hand doing some motions over an evenly lit green screen (tho not sure wether to draw a faint version of the drawing in green pen first or just some strokes)
3. Animate the drawing appearing using an animated mask
4. Animate the hand over the animation, possibly using a Write-On effect?Olly Lawer
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Hi! Amanda ,
Just saw your post while I was doing some search on using whiteboard animation. Could you find a way to do it and will be grateful if you could post some tutorial too.Thanks a ton
Regards
Kunal
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