Multiple Arms

[Chris Wright]

maybe puppet tool, but that’s only in AE CS3

[William J. meyer]

Hi Josh!

Depending on the shot I think it would easiest to do this in-camera, hiding another 2 people’s arms under a custom-made sweater resembling the one in the photo and obscuring their bodies with the foregrounded performer. If the shot(s) are more complicated, you’d probably have to shoot green screen and key/roto-out the other performers.

If you want to use just one person, and not a green screen, then maybe consider timing a routine where one performer does all the arms offset in space and time and then you roto the arms out of the additional videos. Here’s a related tutorial on AE “cloning” using the same technique, but for whole bodies:

https://www.durbnpoisn.com/films/cloneTut/index.asp

I think the easiest and quickest way (though also the least “real”) is to cut out the additional arms just once from a still (say in Photoshop) and use AE CS3’s puppet tool to animate the arms, attaching them to the video footage of the perfomer.

In every case but the first, the join between the added arms and the body will be the make-or-break point. Try pre-composing the arms and using feathered masks.

I hope some of these ideas spark an approach for you.

take care, wjm

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