My “cartoon” look video….take a look

[Nate Vander plas]

I feel unqualified to critique this since I’ve never tried this effect myself, but I do have one comment. I think if possible your black lines should be thicker and less detailed. Her shirt and nose area are a bit “dirty.” Just an honest opinion which I hope you were looking for! Otherwise looks pretty cool!

[Adolf Witzeling]

Hi Gabe,
nice job overall. I like the colors and the “painted” effect to it.
Especially since you did it all in AE.

I think you could even enhance her face a bit more by simplyfying it , if you were using Illustrators CS2 “Live Trace” feature, just for the facial features, to clean it up a bit. In my opinion eyes, nose, mouth could be more simplified, so they blend in a little more with the undelying color of the face. They seem a little bit to dominant to me.

Aharon Rabinowitz explained it very nice in his cartoon tutorial.
A search of the Cow for” cartoon” should get you there.
Again, I really like the overall look and colors.

Take care,
Adi

[Gabe Strong]

Thanks guys! You are both right. I am trying to fix those very things and having a hard time. I read the Aharon Rabinowitz tutorial, that’s what inspired me to see what I could do in After Effects without going into Illustrator CS2, I thought there may be some people out there without Illustrator CS2 who had After Effects and I was trying to see if I could work out something those people could do.. (I actually worked through Aharon’s tutorial and it worked great for me!,)

I used Tinderbox’s etch filter for the lines. You can use find edges, but the etch filter has parameters you can adjust to make the lines thicker (pen pressure) unlike the find edges filter. The only problem is, that when I up the pen pressure to thicken the lines……that’s when I get the “dirty” stuff around the eyes, nose, and mouth. I’m trying to see if I can clone or something to fix it

The detail part should be able to be fixed pretty easily. I ran a smoothing filter and a posterize filter on the lower layer. I think either turning the posterize filter’s color’s sampled number down, or turning up the smoothing filter should get rid of some detail.

Again, thanks for the input and suggestions!!!!

Gabe Strong
G-Force Productions
http://www.gforcevideo.com

[Ron Lindeboom]

You might try duplicating your layer and using some blend (transfer) modes to affect the image.

I’d try duping the layer, really jamming up the contrast and then use the Tinderbox edge plug-in on that one to create your edges. (Don’t have them on the underlying layer.) By using the modes you will probably be able to find settings that get rid of the “edge garbage” that you are getting by having it all happening in a single layer.

Just a thought…

Ron Lindeboom

[Gabe Strong]

Ron,

I had two layers…..on the bottom one I use Re Visions smoothkit diffuser filter to keep the colors from shifting too much, and I used posterize from Pete’s Plugins (you could use the normal posterize, but the one in Pete’s Plugin’s lets you set a blending mode which I set to luminosity). Then I put another copy of the filter on top, treated it with the etch plug in and changed the composite mode to multiply to drop out all the white…..does that sound like the right way to go about it???

Gabe Strong
G-Force Productions
http://www.gforcevideo.com

[Ronaldo Montalvo]

E for effort but that is seriously ugly. what is the look supposed to communicate? what is the graphic metaphor? why do people think this “cartoon” look is cool? too many questions. even when done in a technically cleaner way its charmless, a total distraction in the linklater movie and it’s just creepy in the schwab commercials. let it go.

[Iancorey]

A for effort. I agree. Just looks like everyone’s first experience with PhoSho’s Posterize and Find Edges. The black lines lack enough consistency to make them artistic – each one closely resembling an accident. That Waking Life Linklater effect takes a great deal of effort, tracing everything in the frame every couple of frames. If there was a pile of effects that could approximate that look it would be much desired.

Again, A for effort. I hope this doesn’t come off rude.

[Gabe Strong]

Hmmmm….as to the point…..I don’t know there really wasn’t one. I was just trying to see if I could even get close to a look that for some reason has been used in some TV spots and things recently. As you say, the black lines were ugly. I couldn’t get the find edges lines to be wide enough, I then tried to dupe the lines layer a couple times and move it by a couple pixels one way or another and use the multiply mode again to drop out the white…..the purpose of this was to make the lines wider. I just went back in and used masks to mask out parts of the shot where there was too many lines (around the nose, mouth and eyes) and on the wall behind her. It looks better, but a lot of work for a 10 sec clip. Anyways, thanks for the comments, I think this is one of those times where I’ve done something silly just to see if I could, because I’m pretty much a video editor and not too good with creating effects.

Gabe Strong
G-Force Productions
http://www.gforcevideo.com

[Adolf Witzeling]

Hi alaskadude,
If you revise the clip, would you mind posting it? I’d be interested to see how the “final” turned out.
I think if you thicken up the lines and simplify them it will look less computer generated and have a more handcrafted
feel to it (like the Charles Schwab commercial , which I don’t believe was created by “just running a couple filters”;
there was a lot more (handywork) involved. But again, that’s just my 2 cents worth…
Take care,
Adi