How can I add an animated white boiling egde line ?

[David Mattock]

Hi I have blue screen footage that I have keyed out, Now I need to add a fairly thick white outline to it that wobbles and boils like in cartoons such as Rubard and Custard old style.. any ideas ?

Thanks

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[Tim Kurkoski]

Very quickly off the top of my head (without testing to see how well it works);

1. Auto-trace
2. Stroke
3. Scribble

[David Mattock]

HI, Thanks for your response, really helped !
Ive messed around with the settings and different effects to scribble but the line seems very jaggy?.. any other suggestions, i need it smoother and have a slight wobble

Also the traced mask seems to sometimes be out of sync and lag behing the footage it was auto traced from? how can I fix this ?

Thanks again

[Tim Kurkoski]

You’ll probably need to refine the auto-trace settings to get it to match your footage closely. It’s probably picking up edge pixels off the bluescreen key (a tighter/more accurate key would also help). Try upping the tolerance and threshold values a little. Usually I have to experiment- try some settings, scrub the timeline to see how the mask looks, undo, try again.

As for the scribble, try playing with the Stroke Options in the Scribble effect. You should be able to get the look you want from there. It does tend to be a little jaggy, so you might want to move the scribbled mask to it’s own layer, then apply a very slight blur or glow to smooth out the edges.