Creating JibJab's in AS

[Anthony M.]

Hi everyone

I had experimented with Moho over the summer and recently purchased Anime Studio 5 which I find to be a very worthwile program. I have been able to make my own experimental cartoons however I am having a little trouble with imported photos. In AS I have tried to import a photo (head shot) of a relative which works however when it is brought into the program along with the head comes the blank white background behind the head (I extracted the picture of the head from a photograph then I placed into a blank Windows Paint document then imported it as a JPEG into AS). I wanted to place the head onto a cartoon body much like the Jib Jab animations do. Is there away I can edit the headshot in AS so I can seperate the jaw from the head then use bones to animate the mouth and also so I can put the head onto a cartoon body without having the white background conflicting? If anyone knows how to create a JibJab-like animation in AS (or knows where I may find a tutorial on how I can do it) I would greatly appreciate it if someone could tell me how to approach this.

Thank you in advance,

Anthony

[Nolan Scott]

Using Anime Studio Pro / OSX 10.4.8

Well, My way of doing animation with images, I cut all my images in Photoshop
and save each part of them as .png with transparent background.
These images are imported into AS, moved into position and rigged.

As far as I know there is no way to edit bitmaps directly in AS.

Please have a look at Tutorial 4.1 to 4.4 that should give you the basics.

Cheers
Nolan

[Anthony M.]

Thank you for the quick response I will look through those tutorials. I was wondering to make the background transperant for still picture (photo) is that only possible to do in photoshop or can a basic program like paint do it aswell? Thanks again for your reply.

Anthony

[heyvern]

The Gimp http://www.gimp.org/ is free and can handle creating pngs with transparency.

Don't ask me how, I use Photoshop.

-vern

[moorsel]

You can use many programs for doing this. Photoshop is able to do the thing you want. I personally use Paint Sho Pro 9. Important is that you use an export format that supports the transparency. I use png.

An animation I made using this technique is (using pngs exported from psp9):

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... 9991881487

Some of the objects seen in this animation were cut out from pictures and exported from paint shop pro into AS as a png.

Gr,
Frank

[Touched]

In addition to the Gimp, there's another free program called Paint.NET that also saves PNGs with transparent backgrounds, which is what you want. It says it was designed to be familiar to users of Windows Paint.

[Anthony M.]

An animation I made using this technique is (using pngs exported from psp9):

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... 9991881487

Some of the objects seen in this animation were cut out from pictures and exported from paint shop pro into AS as a png.

Gr,
Frank

Frank (moorsel) I just wanted to comment on you animation, I thought it was well made. Especially the beginning, a very nice simulation of a spaceship launch

In addition to the Gimp, there's another free program called Paint.NET that also saves PNGs with transparent backgrounds, which is what you want. It says it was designed to be familiar to users of Windows Paint.

I think I will first try out Paint.NET then. Thank you so much everyone for all of your help!



Anthony

[Gnaws]

An animation I made using this technique is (using pngs exported from psp9):

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... 9991881487

Hey Frank - that's excellent! Hope to see more.

[LittleFenris]

In AS I have tried to import a photo (head shot) of a relative which works however when it is brought into the program along with the head comes the blank white background behind the head (I extracted the picture of the head from a photograph then I placed into a blank Windows Paint document then imported it as a JPEG into AS).

Noone really pointed out what the problem was in your specific case here...a JPEG can't export a transparent background so it defaulted the background to white.

As the others have said, use PNG's or GIF's that do have an option for transparent backgrounds. PNG's are by far the best looking format that AS can import that support transparent backgrounds.

[Touched]

Yes, PNG is better than GIF, because PNG supports 256 levels of transparency, whereas GIF transparency is either on or off, resulting in jagged edges.

[Víctor Paredes]

know somebody why are 256 transparency levels?
256 is a number which is repeated a lot in several things, as gradients for example.

why 256?
has this some biblical meaning?

[Touched]

Because like a lot of things in the computer industry, it works on multiples of 8. 8 bits in a byte. 256 is 8x32. This is why you see RAM in multiples of 8, such as 128, 256, 512, 1024.

For more info, check here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8-bit_color

[Víctor Paredes]

uhm. but do you know why no more than 256?

[Touched]

Sorry, I edited my last post to add this, but I'll reply again since you already replied. This has all the info about how it applies to graphics:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8-bit_color

Also see the entries for Highcolour (16-bit) and Truecolour.

[Víctor Paredes]

thanks touched .
i'm reading (but i'm a slow english reader).