James Brown ‘Cutout’

[Erik Pontius]

Welcome to rotoscoping.
You might check out the “How do you cut out an actor from the background (Rotoscoping)?”
in the “Common After Effects Questions (FAQ)” post that is at the very top of the AE forum.

Once you have done all your masking, your background will be transparent. You can then include this into another composition.
It is a little more complicated if you are exporting the footage to be used in another application. You will need to export the footage with an “alpha” channel and in a format that supports it (i.e Quicktime Animation).

Erik

[Chris Miller]

The advert is a very professional version of the effect I

[Mike Clasby]

There is no tutorial to walk you through what you want to do. Each roto job is really unique and no two use the same techniques.

This is the best source I know off, recommended here before, that’s how I found out about it. It was done with Commotion, but the same principals work fine in AE. He uses several techniques, I especially like the multiple masks, one for each moving unit, like a leg, an arm, the torso. here you go, click the links on these pages. You might want to Right-Click and download, they’re worth repeated viewing.

You can move the mask as a whole by double clicking any vertex, then you get a little Transform Box like in Photoshop, resize, Shift for proportional, rotate, then hit Enter.

https://effectscorner.blogspot.com/2006/01/rotoscoping-part-1.html

https://effectscorner.blogspot.com/2006/01/rotoscoping-part-2.html

[Chris Miller]

Thanks for the speedy replies, well…there is no shortcut to success so i better keep going (there goes my sleeping pattern)

I’ll post up the finished results and let you know how I got on.

Thanks again

[Erik Pontius]

Keep in mind that you don’t necessarily need to create a new unique mask for every keyframe.
If you twirl down the properties for the mask, you will see an keyframeable option for mask shape. You can either create normal keyframes or hold keyframes, moving and re-positioning your mask.

Erik

[Steve Roberts]

… and if you watch the Godfather of Soul’s motion carefully, you’ll see places where it changes direction. This is where you place your mask shape keyframes, allowing AE to interpolate the mask’s shape between those keyframes.

I hope that made sense …. remember the fewer keyframes, and fewer mask vertices, the better.