VIDEO To CARTOON Look - Need Feedback Please!

[sumary]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DZ4vGBjtIQ
video to cartoon - my 1st attempt at creating a cartoon using video

I was looking for information on the look utilized in the Robert Downey Jr and Keanu Reeves movie "A Scanner Darkly". I've been trying to create a look like this for a long time. Here's what I came up with.

It's is a rotoscope aninmated B/W horror film I made utilizing the VIDEO to CARTOON look. It's not perfect. I used a lot of different computer softwares and shot it on the Panasonic DVX100. Please let me know what you think.

Title: Toxic Betrayal
Genre: Horror/Comedy
Synopsis: A college students life takes a turn for the worst, after he wins 10 million dollars in the lottery.

Here's the Youtube Link below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DZ4vGBjtIQ

 

[bwwd]

They made this effect by hand ,frame by frame and you cant do that with plugin ,you have to draw the animated faces on real frames.Your video has only visible darkened outlines but thats like completely different fx.
There is no shortcut for this.
As for your effect ,it could look like sketch made with pencils if you would take some colours down.Some things in background look decent ,like tv ,table and chairs ,but faces... i think you would need some sort of white paint on faces and then paint the eyes and lips dark to help your software recognize the lines.
Post your videos in HQ,cause regular youtube compression is very ugly even for real films.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DZ4vGBjtIQ&fmt=18

 

[Noel Evans]

I mean no offence. But heres my thoughts. Looks like youre trying to cover up something poorly shot by turning into a cartoon and its not working. Just doesnt look good either way. Sound quality is poor also. Im sorry, but thats the reality of what you have.

 

[mvansomeren]

Although there aren't plug-ins that will do all the work for your, there are plenty of plug-ins and software available that will make the process easier. Here is just one example:

http://www.silhouettefx.com/roto/

 

[sumary]

Thanks for the feedback. I really appreciate it. We definitely weren't trying to cover anything up. Since the footage look good before we transfered it to photoshop. Our original intent was to convert the film we shot on the DVX100 to cartoon. That's the reason I got the Photoshop plugin software. I think the plugin I purchased is probally great for still images, but not great for video even though thats what they claim on their website.

It's trial and error. I guess.

 

[DCP]

If you are using photoshop to adjust your image frame by frame take a look at Alien Skin Snap Art:

http://www.alienskin.com/snapart/snapart_examples.aspx

This will probably suit you better.

You can also try this plug-in (for FCP and a variety of other NLE programs): http://www.newbluefx.com/cartoonr/

Good luck.

Todd

 

[ZazaCast]

Might help?
http://www.newbluefx.com/cartoonr/

...might not.....

 

[j1clark@ucsd.edu]

I was looking for information on the look utilized in the Robert Downey Jr and Keanu Reeves movie "A Scanner Darkly". I've been trying to create a look like this for a long time. Here's what I came up with.

It's is a rotoscope aninmated B/W horror film I made utilizing the VIDEO to CARTOON look. It's not perfect. I used a lot of different computer softwares and shot it on the Panasonic DVX100. Please let me know what you think.

"Scanner Darkly" was done with some amount of automation, but also some amount of hand work.

The "Juno" intro sequence was done by some amount of automation, outputing to paper of the various 'human' figures, cutout, then xeroxed, then rescanned, with handworked backgrounds...

I have gotten sort of a flavor of the "Scanner Darkly" style by using Flash and a filter which turns the current frame into a 'vector' representation of the digital image. Using various number of 'levels' one can get more regions or fewer regions.

Then one would have to further manipulate the image by drawing in the edge lines over the vectorized image to get the 'filled' region effect.

I also experimented using After Effects, to track elements in the live footage, then match the movement of the vector elements, like hand drawn 'edge' lines using the AE pen tool...

If I have time in the next day or two, I'll upload some of these examples to my Youtube account.

Since I don't do this for a living, you will have to take these experiments as they are...


Oh, as a note that... if you do get what you are looking for in the 'flash vectorized' version... once the image is 'vectorized', one can blow it up to any HD resolution with no 'jaggies'... since it is a vector representation...

 

[bwwd]

This was more handwork than automation, they were hand drawn ,then animated with keyframes .In old times all frames were keyframes but this new kind of animation let you to have lets say 2 keyframes for 6 frames so 4 of them are counted by computer.