Hand drawn graphics and animation look set to be one of the hot trends for summer 2010, and you’ll see a lot of this style in adverts and plastered all over the web.

Broadcast videographer and video post production expert, Geraint ‘Geggs’ Abbott, shares an impressive After Effects technique with us. Follow along with his tutorial to create uniquely stylised moving images in the form of a flipbook animation!

One of the problems with traditional animation methods is that they are just so time consuming – plus, you need amazing traditional art skills as well as a lot of patience. This tutorial is going to show you an interesting flip-book style effect which can give your designs that ‘hand-drawn’ touch, as well as opening up a number of possibilities for integrating animated style graphics with live action footage. With a little thought, the principles of this tutorial can be used on a wide range of different applications.

This tutorial is aimed at users with some experience of Adobe After Effects – it’ll be easiest to follow this tutorial if you know your way around the basic tools, are comfortable using expressions, and have an understanding of motion tracking – as these topics won’t be covered in great depth here.

Ok, let’s get started!

Prep:

For this tutorial, you’ll need two pieces of footage – firstly, the background footage of someone flipping a blank notebook like this:

You’ll also need the image that you want to put onto the flipbook, shot against a keyable background. For this tutorial I’ve used some freebie demo footage from RibbitFilms (http://bit.ly/aG6BDC – you have to register to get it, but it’s great, as they allow you to use it in showreels). My footage came pre-keyed with an embedded alpha channel:

Tutorial:

Step 1:

Ok, so let’s start off by importing the footage to go on the flipbook. If you’re using the RibbitFilms stock, it comes as an image sequence, so make sure you you hit the ‘TARGA sequence’ tickbox, and that the dropdown menu is set to ‘footage’

Step 2:

If your footage has been shot on a greenscreen, pull a key using Keylight or your favourite method and hit Cmd + Shift + C to precompose the layer. If your footage is pre-keyed, you can skip this step.

So, the first thing to do is to make our footage look like it’s been drawn by hand. First, let’s desaturate the image to greyskale, as we’re going for a pencil-drawn outline look. So go to Effects > Colour Correction > Hue / Saturation. Drag the Master Saturation slider all the way down to -100, leaving you with a greyscale version of the image:

Step 3:

The next effect to add is an edge detect – and here’s where the effect starts to take shape. Go to Effects > Stylize > Edge Detect :

Step 4:

This is good, but we need to simplify the image down, to give us clearer, more defined lines. To do this, we’ll add a threshold effect – Effects > Stylize > Threshold

Step 5:

What we’re aiming for is to leave the outlines at the edges of the girl, and get rid of the extra grey tones on the inside of the shape. You’ll need to adjust the effect depending on your source footage, but with a little playing around you should be able to get a nice clean look. For this footage, I used a threshold level of around 205.

If you scrub through the footage, you should have a pretty nice looking line-drawing effect – but it’ll be pretty uniform looking. What we need to do now is introduce some random elements to give it that hand drawn feel. We’ll add one now random element now, and more as we carry on.

Take the layer, and press Cmd + D to duplicate it. On the upper layer, let’s add a slight gausian blur – Effects > Blur & Sharpen > Gausian Blur . Now, highlight the layer and hit T to bring up the opacity settings. We want this blurry layer to flicker on and off, to simulate the drawing being slightly more smudged on some pages of the flipbook. To do this, we’ll add an expression – but first, lets set the opacity to 10%, and click the stopwatch to add a keyframe on the first frame:

Step 6:

Now, hold Alt and click the stopwatch to bring up the expression editing mode and type:

wiggle(0.5,10)

Step 7:

This will alter the opacity of the blurred layer, but unlike a ‘random’ expression, it gradually fades in and fades out – but it is limited to the range of 0% – 20% opacity, because the first keyframe is at 10%, and the expression tells After Effects only to alter the range of the opacity +/- 10%. So the effect is a gradual smudging and clarifying of the layer.

Step 8:

So, we’re happy with that, so let’s hit Cmd + Shift + C to precompose the layer, making sure we hit ‘Move all attributes into new composition’.

The next thing that we’re going to do is add the ‘brush strokes’ effect, which will really give the impression that the drawing is made up of sketchy pencil strokes rather than just an edge detect effect. So go to Effects > Stylize > Brush Strokes . Let’s reduce the ‘brush size’ down from the default of 2, down to nearer 1.3 – this will help to retain a little bit of detail, but still gives a great look.

Step 9:

Let’s take a moment to add another random element, again to give it that hand-drawn feel. Let’s duplicate the layer by pressing Cmd + D.

Step 10:

Let’s go into the brush stroke effect and modify it a little – let’s change the brush size on this layer, right up to something around 5. This will give a big splotchy looking version of the layer.

Step 11:

We need to tame this effect a little, to make it look more like a pencil drawing that’s been smudged slightly, rather than one that’s been drawn in crayon. So let’s bring the ‘blend with original’ setting up to around 40%.

Next, let’s add an expression to the opacity of this layer, again to vary it over time, giving us that random hand-drawn look from frame to frame of the flipbook. So, make sure the upper layer is selected, and hit T to open the opacity, hold Alt and click on the stopwatch. In the expression editor, type this:

wiggle(0.5,100)

OK, that’s the animation done! RAM preview the comp and make sure you’re happy with the effect. Press Cmd + K to open the composition settings dialogue, and rename the composition:

ANIMATION FOR BOOK FINAL.

____________________________________________________________________________________

Step 12:

The next step is to take the background footage and create a new comp with it (drag it from the project window onto the ‘create new comp’ button at the bottom of the tab to create a new composition with the same properties as the clip you’re using).

We’re going to be motion tracking the pad – for this I’ll be using the lower left hand corner, as it’s got a nice clean edge.

Step 13:

So, let’s add a new null object to the composition (Layer > New > Null Object) and rename it ‘Motion Track’. Now, select the footage layer, and go to Animation > Track Motion. In the motion tracking display, select your tracking point, in our case the lower left hand corner of the pad, and hit the ‘Analyze forward’ button:

Step 14:

Once After Effects has finished tracking the motion, hit Edit Target, and make sure that the ‘Motion Track’ null layer is selected from the drop-down menu. Then apply the motion in both X and Y.

Next, let’s import our ANIMATION FOR BOOK FINAL composition. Line up the start of the animation comp with the frame where the first page of the flipbook is visible. Now let’s scale down the animation comp a little bit to fit onto the pages of the pad:

Step 15:

Now, let’s make this layer 3D by hitting the 3D Layer switch. Hit W to bring up the rotation tool, and rotate around each axis to position the layer to fit on the pad.

Step 16:

Once you’re happy with the positioning of the layer, use the pickwhip tool to parent the layer to the Motion Track null.

Step 17:

RAM preview to make sure that you’re happy with the way the layer tracks onto the pad. You might need to adjust the scale or the position to make sure that it sits on the page all the way through the animation.

Next, let’s change the blending mode of the layer from normal to multiply. This will remove all the white from the image, leaving us with clean black pencil lines on the pad. Here’s where the shot really starts to take shape:

Step 18:

Now, let’s add another expression to the opacity of the animation layer, to give it that flickering effect. Hit T to open the opacity, hold Alt and click the stopwatch. Enter this expression into the editor:

random (50,80)

That’s the flicker, so let’s add some random noise into the image to improve the composition. Go to Effects > Noise & Grain > Add Noise. Make sure ‘use colour noise’ is selected, and drag the slider up to somewhere around 7 – 10%.

Step 19:

If you RAM preview at this point, you’ll notice that the motion on the flipbook is unnaturally smooth – so let’s reduce the framerate with a Posterize Time effect – Effects > Time > Posterize Time. Set it to something around 15 – 20fps.

Another element that helps to sell the shot is being able to see the drawing through the back of the pages yet to be flipped. Let’s duplicate the animation layer by pressing Cmd + D, then press S to open the scale properties. Unlink the ‘constrain properties’ switch:

Step 20:

Click on the second variable to enable text editing of the value, and re-type the value but include a minus sign at the start; in this case, 27.7% would become -27.7%

This will result in the duplicated layer being turned upside down, like this:

Step 21:

Now we want to reposition the upper upside-down layer on the ‘unflipped’ pages of the flipbook. You will probably need to scale the image down in the vertical dimension to get it to fit the area correctly.

Step 22:

Because this layer is also parented to the Motion Track null, you’ll find that once you’ve positioned it in the first frame, it should be in the right position throughout the animation. RAM preview to check it’s position throughout, and make any adjustments as necessary.

As we’re supposedly seeing this image through the back of the paper, let’s add a little bit of a blur so that’s it’s not as clear – go to Effects > Blur & Sharpen > Fast Blur . Set this to around 10%.

Next, let’s simulate the ‘bend’ of the unflipped pages, by using a bulge effect. With the upper animation layer selected, go to Effects > Distort > Bulge . You’ll need to extend the horizontal radius to match the width of the flipbook, and adjust the positioning and vertical radius to fit the bend.

Step 23:

Let’s add an expression to the bulge height to vary over time, to simulate the ‘bend’ of the pages changing as each page flips down. Hold Alt and click the stopwatch next to ‘Bulge Height’ in the effect controls tab. In the expression editor, type this:

random(0.5,1)

And now let’s add an expression to the opacity of the whole upper layer. Make sure the upper layer is selected, and hit T to bring up the opacity. Hold Alt, click on the stopwatch and add this:

random(0.5,15)

Step 24:

We’re nearly there! One more step and we’ve got the perfect flipbook effect. At the moment, it’s still a little too clean, and we just want to accentuate the ‘page flipping’. To do this, let’s duplicate the background layer by selecting it and hitting Cmd + D.

Step 25:

Select the duplicated layer, and drag it on top of all the other layers.

Step 26:

Press T to bring up the transparency for this layer, and let’s temporarily set the opacity down to 0% so we can see what we’re doing. Now we want to draw a rough mask around the area of the flipbook where the pages are turning, like this:

Step 27:

Don’t worry about making it too accurately – as long as it roughly covers the area where the pages flip, that’s fine. Now, hit T to bring up the opacity, and set it back to 100%.

Step 28:

Next, open up the opacity for the layer again, and let’s add the following expression (hold Alt and click the stopwatch)

random(20,60)

Finally, find the frame in which the flipbook closes – here you can see that the animation comp extends past the point at which the flipbook has finished

Step 29:

Select the layer where you want the animation to finish, and hit Cmd + Shift + D to split it. Delete the extraneous part of the comp which extends past the close of the book – and that’s it! An awesome little flipbook that didn’t involve loads of drawing.

Don’t forget that it doesn’t just have to be live action on the flipbook – it’s also a great way of presenting title graphics or text!

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