Kinect MoCap Animation in After Effects — Part 1: Getting Started

Hello, I’m Victoria Nece. I’m a documentary animator, and today I’m going to show you how to use your Kinect to animate a digital puppet like this one in After Effects.

After Effects Tutorial: Edmonson Cartoon Effect

Requires After Effects CS4+. Use the Cartoon effect to turn a sequence of still photographs into animated line art. You can composite the result over a wide range of textured backgrounds.

Note:
Almost a year to the date I originally wrote this tutorial, I can finally make it public because the film has been released! You can watch it here: Jury Selection: Edmonson v. Leesville Concrete Company.

This is the trailer, which is almost entirely done with the effect I’m about to explain:

I’m currently working on a new Constitution Project film about Edmonson V. Leesville Concrete Company. In the past, we’ve used methods like digital puppetry to avoid filming reenactments. Edmonson is a much more recent court case than the others we’ve covered (1991), but the US Supreme Court only permits audio recordings of oral arguments, so there’s still no footage of the proceedings.

We were actually able to interview several of the people involved, however, resulting in tons of sharp, clear green screen footage (It’s also our first CP film in HD), as well as hundreds if not thousands of still images. So what to do with them?

Crochet an Android Robot

I love the Android logo guy. He’s adorable. So I thought I’d make a stuffed one!

Okay Paintings

It is possible to create great-looking digital paintings with Photoshop. But it can’t be done with filters alone: at the very least, you’re going to need a tablet and some drawing skills. Running effects on a photo is simply no match for work done by hand.

Embroidered Text in Photoshop

A friend of mine was working on some logos for a little league team and asked me for a way to make text look as if it had been embroidered onto a uniform.

After a fair amount of experimentation, it turns out it’s not that hard to do — but it does take a little tweaking. The final results are surprisingly versatile.

Get it Straight

Here’s a quick Photoshop trick that takes the guesswork out of rotating your images.

Fanning the AEFlames

AEFlame is a free, immensely powerful After Effects plugin capable of generating gorgeous fractals which evolve over time. You can use it to create elegant abstract backgrounds, swirly patterns that bounce around to music, even images that look like something from deep space.