How do I animate with real images

[sargumphigaus]

I'm working on a video where I want to make a silly demonstration about the irrational behavior of my roomates cats. I don't just want to build the cats up from scratch, Instead I want to take actual pictures of them, divide each limb and body part of the actual photograph and turn them into seperate bone portions and make them move around as if the picture itself has come to life in a horrendously fake fashion. Kind of like how Terry Gilliam does it in Monti Python's flying circus.

Is this possible in ASP8 and if so, does anyone know a general method of approaching this?

[funksmaname]

You pretty much describe the method you need to take - just prepare the parts in photoshop first and bring them in as separate layers...
In the recently published webinar Selgin gives some good tips on rigging images (he shows how you rig a doll arm) - should give you all you need to be able to do this.

Minute 48 is where it starts, but the rest is also useful!
(video wouldn't embed :S)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?list=UU-GY ... DE#t=2903s

[sargumphigaus]

A couple of follow up questions to your suggestion.

1. Can you make the layer in photoshop translate over to the image as a layer and not a simple picture with the intrusive white square background>

2. Is this possible to do with microsoft pain as well (I don't have photoshop)

[funksmaname]

I would get GIMP, its free, and has a lot of photoshop like functionality (i'm told)
I'm not certain MS paint supports transparency... you need to use something that supports PNG24 (or 32bit if you're slowtiger hehe) support - which includes an alpha channel so you get full transparency support (not just ON/OFF like a gif, but actual gradiated transparency) so no ugly white boxes.
Check the video I posted, you'll see the arm is on a completely transparent background.

[sbtamu]

Here is a simple demo to combine the images, If you still have trouble let me know and I will show you how to erase the background and separate each part.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRFkpSEcToA

[funksmaname]

that's one ugly a** sqwirl!

[sargumphigaus]

I think this should be everything I need. I'm at work at the moment, but when I get home, I'm going to try and grab that program you mentioned. I'll post the results several weeks from now, depending on my motivation/attention span

Thanks for your help gentlemen. You guys are alright in my book.

[sargumphigaus]

hey, thanks alot for sharing that webinar video with me. I watched the whole thing, and it turned my approach completely around for the better.

[Víctor Paredes]

hey, thanks alot for sharing that webinar video with me. I watched the whole thing, and it turned my approach completely around for the better.

I'm glad you find the webinar useful, thanks for watching it

[Poptoogi]

Hey sargumphigaus,

Just wanted to let you know that you can cut apart apart a picture in anime studio without the need for another program like photoshop. I made a real crappy tutorial on how to do this that might help if you want to do the cutout part in AS. The first tutorial is just how to cut out a picture precisely in AS and the second shows you how to use masks and duplicate images of a picture to make parts. I'm sure you've probably already started using another technique but hey, it doesn't hurt to know how to do it this way as well!