Article Focus: In this 3-part tutorial, Creative cow leader Aharon Rabinowitz explains the process of converting video to cartoon by using only After Effects and Adobe Illustrator CS2. While the tutorial spans 50 minutes and covers a wide range of topics (some in depth and some in general), after you have gone through the process once, you will find that it's easy to adapt the Cartoonification technique to your own needs.
Part One: Preparing the video in After Effects
Topics covered: Dealing with interlaced footage, Basic Color and Image Correction, Creating Outlines, Rendering an Image Sequence.
Part Two: Converting Illustrator CS2
Topics covered: Altering Illustrator Scripts, preparing presets and color palettes with Live Trace, Batch processing using Bridge.
Part Three: Compositing your footage in After Effects
Topics covered: Importing an image sequence, Using layer blending/transfer modes, Motion Tracking, Hold Keyframes, changing and forcing frame rates.
The LiveTrace.jsx in CS4 is totally different then the one in CS2. I have the feeling they changed it them selfs, the dudes from adobe. The value is set as default to 50000.
There should be no differences between PAL and NTSC here.
Not sure what to tell you about the BG. Without green, you will run into problems in Keying. COlor correcting will probably not work.
As a side note, you should check out the Toon It! Plug-in from Digital Anarchy. That might help you create the cartoon effect with a lot less work.
Creating a Cartoon from Video
by Robert Evans on Mar 3, 2008
hey, I'm intending to use this technique for my film studies project (only about 1:30 - 2:00 mins) and i was wondering a few things, first are there many differences for PAL footage and will effect the cartoonisiation... i don't even know what that says :O
also I'm intending to use a green screen, but i don't have the resources for an actual green, what i do have is a photography studio, do you think its possible to colour correct the white background of the studio to green/blue and then chroma key? any help would be much obliged
