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Overlaying cartoon animation onto live video ...

Explorer ,
Apr 01, 2014 Apr 01, 2014

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Hello All,

Noob here. 

I am learning AE and Ai.  I have been doing massive research on things I need to learn and have a few questions. 

I've been using Illustrator to draw up some 2D cartoons and then learning how to animate them and incorporate them into music videos.  Small stuff like cute flying birds, suns, flowers, small characters, etc.

I have tons of Q's so maybe it's best to ask this question first ... are their good tutorials online regarding this subject (creating, drawing, animating cartoons to use as stand alone cartoons and also to embed over live footage)?  I'm aware of Lynda.com but wasn't sure if they have this sort of tutorial.

My next Q is ...

If I've illustrated and animated a character (flower, or bird, or cartoon person dancing) ... what's the best way to incorporate that into my live clip?  Let's say i have a girl singing and want the bird to fly across the screen, or onto her shoulder.  Would I do this in After Effects? Or would I export from After Effects and then do the overlaying in Final Cut Pro (which I'm using to edit my videos)? 

I exported a 10 second cartoon I made of flowers lip syncing to the audio track that I'm doing the video for and when I rendered, the background was white.  I wasn't sure how to composite that onto my FCP video and so here I am....

What's the normal workflow when doing this?  I'm confident I can figure it out but just want to know the best way/normal way to do it.

Setup

Apple Mac Pro

Mountain Lion

Adobe CS6

(After Effects, illustrator, photoshop)

Final Cut Pro 7

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Community Expert ,
Apr 01, 2014 Apr 01, 2014

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AE is just layers... Put your cartoon on a new layer and your video on the layer below, then adjust or animate the position as needed.

If you have camera moves in your live footage then you are going to have to do some camera tracking or motion tracking to keep things lined up.

If your cartoons have been created on an opaque background then you'll have to re-do them so the background is transparent.

This is no different than overlaying text on video as shown here in the first video:  Basic Workflow

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Explorer ,
Apr 01, 2014 Apr 01, 2014

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Rick,

thanks for the reply.

My thinking was ... like as in Photoshop, one can export a PNG file and overlay that onto video or other medium with the transparent background being "invisible".  I was thinking that by creating a cartoon in AI then animating in AE and exporting a certain way that ONLY the cartoon would be visible and not the extra background negative space (sort of like a hand drawn cell animation)...

but I guess I'm thinking of it the wrong way.

THe cartoons were drawn in Illustrator with a transparent background and what I normally do is Import the AI file as a composition and then all the layers show up in AE and then I can puppet animate from there.  I'm sure I'm doing it the LONG way but that's what I've discovered just by trial and error....

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Community Expert ,
Apr 01, 2014 Apr 01, 2014

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If you have maintained transparency properly in your Illustrator work and animation, you can output video files with an alpha channel.  The alpha channel defines which parts of the video are transparent.  Coomon formats for this are Quicktime Animation codec, or Quicktime PNG codec.  There is an Output Module in After Effects by default called "Lossless With Alpha".

But there are few advantages to compositing within your editing software in many cases.  9 times out of 10 I find a better workflow is to do the actual compositing (layering the animation onto the video) within AE.  A standard workflow would be to finalise your edit in FCP or Premiere Pro as much as possible, then use that as your base to composite the animation on top in After Effects.

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Explorer ,
Apr 01, 2014 Apr 01, 2014

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Andrew Yoole wrote:

If you have maintained transparency properly in your Illustrator work and animation, you can output video files with an alpha channel.  The alpha channel defines which parts of the video are transparent.  Coomon formats for this are Quicktime Animation codec, or Quicktime PNG codec.  There is an Output Module in After Effects by default called "Lossless With Alpha".

9 times out of 10 I find a better workflow is to do the actual compositing (layering the animation onto the video) within AE.  A standard workflow would be to finalise your edit in FCP or Premiere Pro as much as possible, then use that as your base to composite the animation on top in After Effects.

I'm not sure if I have actually maintained transparency properly ... but that's something I'll research.

It seems like the easiest thing to do is to get my edited video from FCP and bring it into AE and then composite in AE.

Is it common workflow to just grab a few seconds of a video here and there (only where you're going to add animation) and then do those scenes in AE ... rather than importing the entire 3-4 minute song?

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Community Expert ,
Apr 01, 2014 Apr 01, 2014

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Dallas Kruse wrote:

It seems like the easiest thing to do is to get my edited video from FCP and bring it into AE and then composite in AE.

Is it common workflow to just grab a few seconds of a video here and there (only where you're going to add animation) and then do those scenes in AE ... rather than importing the entire 3-4 minute song?

Absolutely.  It's very common to work with just small segments of longer jobs in After Effects.

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Community Expert ,
Apr 01, 2014 Apr 01, 2014

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I would do the animation in AE using Illustrator files imported as a comp. Simple as can be. Then just position the cartoon on over your video.

If you expected animating cartoons to be quick it isn't, never was, never will be. There are things you can do that speed up the process of using the pupet pin.

Check out this tutorial from my good friend Angie Taylor.

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Explorer ,
Apr 01, 2014 Apr 01, 2014

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Rick Gerard wrote:

I would do the animation in AE using Illustrator files imported as a comp. Simple as can be. Then just position the cartoon on over your video.

If you expected animating cartoons to be quick it isn't, never was, never will be. There are things you can do that speed up the process of using the pupet pin.

Check out this tutorial from my good friend Angie Taylor.

I never expected it to be "easy" ... but for what I'm doing (a very flat, 2d animation), I think I can do it myself without having to hire outside help....that's basically my goal here.

I have been using the Puppet tool and it's been invaluable.

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Community Expert ,
Apr 01, 2014 Apr 01, 2014

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Here's a job I did a few years ago that's entirely what you're doing:  graphic elements (mostly hand drawn in this case) composited into live action.

And here's a more recent one I contributed to that has some clever use of the puppet tool to animate the characters.

If you have questions about the processes feel free.

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Explorer ,
Apr 01, 2014 Apr 01, 2014

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Andrew Yoole wrote:

Here's a job I did a few years ago that's entirely what you're doing:  graphic elements (mostly hand drawn in this case) composited into live action.

And here's a more recent one I contributed to that has some clever use of the puppet tool to animate the characters.

If you have questions about the processes feel free.

Oh man ... these are bloody brilliant.

I'm a music producer by trade and this is the stuff that really turns me on to the video world.

Do you mind if I PM you for email addresses to pick your brain for a bit?

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Explorer ,
Apr 02, 2014 Apr 02, 2014

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Post Script...

Where would I find some royalty free stock animated characters?  I tried google searching but I'm not sure exactly the nomenclature in the video world.

Are there resources for buying pre-drawn characters (cartoon animals and such) and then being able to add them in illustrator or AE and edit them to your liking? Sort of like buying drum loops or guitar loops and then using them in a song or DJ set.

Is this possible? Am i making sense?

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Community Expert ,
Apr 02, 2014 Apr 02, 2014

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Contributor ,
Apr 02, 2014 Apr 02, 2014

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There are a few rigged characters for After Effects at this site: http://slipperyrockcreative.com.  And here are some that are rigged for Toon Boom but the art can be used in AI or AE: http://www.cartoonsmartart.com/office_bods.php5. The only other rigged 2D characters that I know of are specifically for Anime Studio (a great app that uses bones for animating vector or raster art) like this one for example: http://www.contentparadise.com/productDetails.aspx?id=24434.

These tutorials cover character creation in Illustrator and animation in AE, but I'm not sure if any of them deal specifically with compositing over live action:

http://design.tutsplus.com/articles/how-to-animate-a-vector-character-in-after-effects-with-aetuts-a....

http://www.premiumbeat.com/blog/character-animation-fundamentals-for-after-effects/

http://www.sketchypictures.com/1111/create-cartoons-ch1/

https://www.macprovideo.com/tutorial/aftereffectscs5303-more-cartoon-animation-basics

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Explorer ,
Apr 03, 2014 Apr 03, 2014

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all these replies are immensely helpful!

I'm working on crudely animated a SIMPLE wing flap with a cartoon bird I traced and illustrated (this is a practice run)

I have properly (hopefully) set up my precomp of wing positions consisting of 3 frames (00:00 = wings down, 00:01 = one wing up, 00:02 = both wings up).

I have precomped the wings and when i add that to my sequence and add "allow time remapping", when I add keyframes to assign which frame I want visible, i'm getting overlapping frames.  When I set up the precomp, I made sure no frames were overlapped (refer to screen recording).

I have recording my screen showing moving the keyframe one frame left and right and you can see on the bird that the wings aren't corresponding correctly to the correct frame I assigned and also, the wings are changing positions even when there's no keyframe set. 

As I'm moving the keyframe, the wings overlap ... meaning, the birds right wing should either be UP or DOWN...never BOTH...

Also, I showed the "WINGS" precomp to show how the wing frames are setup.  Anyone have pointers?

I just signed up for VIMEO so the vid is still processing.

Here's a link to a photobucket instantly viewable...

http://s511.photobucket.com/user/dallaskruse/media/AEScreenRecording.mp4.html

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