Rotoscoping Workflow

[Steve Roberts]

Try aplying paint>vector paint to the footage, using onionskin mode.
Do it every other frame, maybe by precomping the footage, applying posterize time to half the frame rate, then applying VP to the precomp.
Morphing every few frames would be really tedious, because you have to set “from” and “to” points manually, at least in the plugins I’ve used.

[Joe Moya]

Your example was probably done with a lot of preparation during the original filming of the sketched characters…. and, used a good blue/green screen.

But…the post editing to achieve this line sketch can be achieved with a photoshop IF you plan the shot right… what is “exactly right”, depends heavily upon what you want to achieve with this style of editing.

Personally, I would use the photoshop’s color pencil artistic filter on each frame… and work the process out on a single frame until you get close (…just how close you can achieve this effect with the least amount of work, depends heavily upon how you film the original frame source). After you have done this, you would want to automate this process with PS’s Batch or Create Droplette (…which you should use depends upon how much RAM you have and much automation is need during the keystroke recording process). Finally, you would import this into a good editing software and strobe the frames to remove frames to achieve a cartoon-like motions.

None of this process would require rotoscoping (assuming you film it correctly)… but, could require some touching up of frames (which will be signficantly easier and faster than rotoscoping).

I may not be specific enough in this post… but, quite honestly… to provide a lot of detail would take a lot of time and would make a pretty good tutorial for those who make instructional tutorials. At least hopefully, I may have given you a direction from which to start. For details, you might do a search of the site and look for references regarding cartoon effect and/or Photoshop keystroke recording. It may take some time to research, but you will find some useful information and details about achieving the results you indicated in your example.

Joe Moya

BTW, you might have noticed… I made no mention of using AE to achieve this line sketch effect. The only use of AE may be in some tracking issues (and… I think it would be much easier and faster to do tracking for the sample video with Imagineer’s Mocha). Other than tracking (…if you don’t have Mocha), to achieve the sample video line sketch effect you could be better off using photoshop and a pro-level editing software.

…….. did a quick look at a prior project…….

…look at PS’s Filter>Sketch>Stamp … that should get you where you need to be much easier and faster than Artistic>color pencil (using a black and white picture).

Joe

[Henner Woehler]

Thank you very much so far.. i’ll have a look at the ps-filters and will do further researches!