Expert: Joseph Silver - 8/7/2010

Question
QUESTION: Hi,
I had recently asked you a question (about After Effects and motion tracking), and you did reply it, but apparently it didn't go through to my email so I've decided to followup in a new form. I originally wanted to make my whole person an animation, but after hearing that 3D animation would be very time consuming and difficult (it is, right?), I have decided to put the avatar's head on my real self. Would this be difficult? And would the person turn out looking weird (with an avatar head but real body?) Also, how do I animate the avatars mouth?
Thanks! Any help would be appreciated!

ANSWER: Hi Michelle,

Is your video footage very shaky? Does your face move around or remain stationary? If it remains stationary, one thing you can try is using mattes in After Effects to cut out the avatar's face and then superimpose it on top of the video of your head. You will want to feather the matte - this will blur the edges of the avatar face so that it better blends into your video. You will also need to color correct using various After Effects filters such as Levels and Hue/Saturation/Brightness to better blend your avatar's skin tone with your actual skin tone.

Even after all this, your avatar's face probably won't totally mesh with your video unless you also use some After Effects motion tracking and keyframe a Distortion effect to match the motion of your video face.

I'm not sure where/how you are creating the avatar's face, but I assume there is a way to type in the text you want and it animates the mouth for you?

www.designomotion.com

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: No, the footage isn't very shaky, but my head will be moving around a bit (head turns, etc.) Can I motion track a moving head?

Answer
Yes, you can motion track a moving head, as long as there are distinct spots on the head to track. It may get a bit tricker if the face is turning. The track may get lost when the head turns too far, and any of the points you are tracking gets obscured. You may find that is is easier to track certain head turns by hand, and use the Corner Pin distortion effect to move your avatar's face to the original one.

www.designomotion.com