cartoon from video?

[Aharon Rabinowitz]

I wanted to know it would worth the pain to make cartoon out of video, is it a new trend?

It’s been a popular request since Waking Life, and with the recent commercials for Charles Schwab and the immenent movie “A Scanner Darkly,” people have asked about this more and more. it could be a trend if enough people use it, but who knows. I can’t turn on TV without seeing Trapcode 3D stroke – so who know what people will be using.

What is the difference simply making a cartoon out of well, cartoon?

I can’t really draw. And I suspect that many other AE animators can’t either. Plus this, as a production tool, is much cheeper and faster than drawing. Reagrdless, it;s just a nother style. Take it or leave it, it’s another option in the procuction process, and as I mentioned above (3D Stroke), everyone uses the same effects right now, it’s annoying, so new options are always a plus…

– Why make color corrections then invert to black and white b4 tracing?

I don’t. In one version I color correct it – for the color output. In the other version I remove the color, raise the contrast, give it some blur and then find edges – to get get edges that illustrator can trace. It’s next to impossible to get good outlines with just regular footage. By finding the edges and making it black and white illustrator can easily and cleanly create edges.

– Couldn’t the posterize effect (also available in photoshop) do the job faster? I give a cartoon-like look to pics and footage.

Absolutely. If you like that look, then yes, it’s there for you. I showed you an example of that (sort of) with the Jim Tierny style. I wouldn’t exactly call that cartoon though. Also, there’s one look you can get and one only (for the most part) with Posterize.

The flexibility of using Illustrator is that you can create many looks and styles and limit your color palletes, and a few other things. I didn’t mention this in the tutorial – I forgot – once you cartoonify the footage you can scale it up as much as you want with no loss in quality – It’s vector art – so theoretically you could even go high def or 4K.

—————————————-
Aharon Rabinowitz
aharon(AT)yahoo(DOT)com
http://www.allbetsareoff.com
—————————————-
Creative Cow Master Series DVD
particleIllusion Fusion Volume 1
available @ http://www.pIllusionFusion.com

[Ploughman]

aharon rules

[Mballom]

Thank you Aaron, great answers. In fact most of them were already in the movie, sorry for the extra job LOL. The truth is my listening english isn’t as advanced as compared to my reading of it.

Just one last question if you don’t mind Arahron: I just didn’t catch the purpose of the cartoon_accent footage. I can tell i understand the other two footages (cartton_lines and cartoon_color), but not the accent one.

Again sorry for the extra job. Lemme also thank all of you guys here at creative cow for being very helpful all the time.

[Aharon Rabinowitz]

Well, that’s just it – it’s accent – It helps create darker shadows in some areas, and allso accents some of the weaker edges. Not necessary, but it’s a personal choice. I liked the way it looked.

—————————————-
Aharon Rabinowitz
aharon(AT)yahoo(DOT)com
http://www.allbetsareoff.com
—————————————-
Creative Cow Master Series DVD
particleIllusion Fusion Volume 1
available @ http://www.pIllusionFusion.com

[Afrosmile]

hi i really like this technique but i have a problem.
i have a character with no background. i saved each image as a tiff file with rgb+ alpha channel but when i open one of the images in illustrator it has a black background do you know how i can switch on the alpha channel in illustrator before i do the live trace.
many thanks

[Aharon Rabinowitz]

Here’s the solution:

https://forums.creativecow.net/cgi-bin/new_read_post.cgi?univpostid=888986&forumid=2&postid=888999&pview=t

Searching the archives will always help you because if you’re question has already been answered, you can get the info right away.

Best regards,

Aharon

—————————————-
Aharon Rabinowitz
aharon(AT)yahoo(DOT)com
http://www.allbetsareoff.com
—————————————-
Creative Cow Master Series DVD
particleIllusion Fusion Volume 1
available @ http://www.pIllusionFusion.com