Expert: Andre Hickman - 3/11/2003

Question
Hi Andre,

Sorry to bother you. I realise this might not be your area of expertise but I thought you might have some ideas. We have designed some basic illustrations of character outlines which we would like to animated realistically (more complex than Flash and more illustrated than Poser)  do you have any ideas how this could be achieved?

Any advice would be appreciated

Best regards

Martin  

Answer
Hey Martin,

I'd really like some more details on what you are trying to do.  However if the character outlines resemble Poser characters or Poser Pro Pack characters, then you might try this (if you have access to the softwares)...

You can manipulate images in Photoshop to look like artistic drawings by using sequences of filters (ex. Posterize the image, then use the Poster Edges filter.)  In Adobe After Effects, you can do some of the same things, only with video frames. You could import the animated TIFFs into After effects (I say tiffs because they will have built in alpha channels around the characters) and use a sequence of filter plugins to get the "drawing" effect.  Then with the alpha channel on, you can composite the entire animation onto what ever background you'd like, or even produce a background larger than the screen and pan the background in a walk sequence.  Trying to do this sort of manipulation in Photoshop, although notimpossible, would take a very long time, as you would have to manipulate frame by frame.

If you want to animate your drawings, well I'm afraid there is really no shortcut to that. You have to make vector images of the character (Adobe Illustrator) and then manipulate the vertices frame by frame in Flash or After Effects, etc.

There is one other solution, if you are a 3D savy person. Model the characters in 3D and do the animations and use different filters to render a "cartoon" output.

Hope some of my rambling helps you.  If you can give me more info on exactly what you are trying to do, and for what medium, then I can probably be a little more specific on the techniques I would use.  But I really think that to try COMPOSITING the animation onto a background is a starting place. Good Luck.

--Andre