Hello. I am here to teach you how to do something called "Rotoscoping" in Flash MX. Rotoscoping is when you take movie (cartoon or real) and make a more cartoony version of it.

The first step in Flash Rotoscoping is to decide which movie you are going to rotoscope. Try to pick a simple movie at first, one with not much movement. Also try to pick one that doesn't change scenes too quickly or else it will get confusing to the person watching. Once you find your movie, go to File-Import-Import To Stage. After this, you will be prompted to choose the movie you want embedded. I would suggest leaving all the settings the way they are. If you choose to do the high settings, it might take a while to import it.

After you complete the previous step, you will see the movie is put on the first layer. Right now, you want to lock the layer so when you draw later, it wont move it around. Next you make a 2nd Layer on top of the movie layer. At this point you should name your layers just because I will refrence them by their names: Rotoscope and Movie.

Now once you rename your layers, go to the part of the movie you want to rotoscope. Here comes the fun yet massivly boring part. Once you get to the part of the movie you want to rotoscope, insert a keyframe. After you insert the keyframe take out your trusty pen and start tracing. I wouldn't suggest making it really detailed or it will take forever to do. For your first time, just do it as simple as you can. You finished it? Congradulations, you just finished the 2nd to hardest part.
After you trace everything, insert a frame (f5) and convert that into a keyframe (f6). Heres the hard part, you have to make all the changes to your last picture into this one. This is why I suggested doing a simple movie at first. Once you make all the changes, repeat the process until you reach the point to where you want to stop.

Heres the fun part. After you finish all you painstaking work, delete the Movie layer. Now you will see alot of blank frames before the point of where you started your movie.(If you started near the middle) Delete these frames until only your movie frames are up. Finnally, you test your movie and see what a great job you did. Give yourself a pat in the back because your finished.


Here is my movie. I did not color mine, but I suggest that you color yours in so it wont look confusing. I added some animation at the end.


Tell me if you still need further help on this topic. I would be glad to show you some pictures or to clarify on what I have said.

lol, that's cool. But it seems a bit tedious. Tracing over the frames? Ha...i wouldn't have the patience to do something like that =P

Well the drawing from the frame before carries over to the next frame, so you just need to modify it alittle.

hmm...i guess that's true. It would make it a bit easier, but it'll still invoke a type of patience I'm not very well suit for >.> by the way...good job on the example animation ^_^

No problem. I have a question to everyone though. You see that the guy is going to shoot a laser beam at the end right? How would I make that look more realistic?

Making the lazer beam realistic... hmm...

There should be a fade effect at the edges... If your talking bout the circle thing that comes up, then make the circle a perfect one... and if it is the Lights ( straight line like thing at the very end ), then just make it bright and flashing.. The fading like effect at all the edges is a must . I guess. :S

That's pretty cool. Quite creative. Simple cartoon movies they seem a bit tedious but then again much in flash is that way at first. Cool little trick to add to the toolbox thanks Hellfire. I might actually have a use for that at work! Cool

Rotoscoping in flash is much more time effective if you don't trace every frame.

What makes rotoscoping in flash easier is using movieclips for the major sections and animating these sections. Basically, you do one generic trace for a section of the film that is basically constant in perspective. Then you seperate the sections with movement into thier own movieclips, adding tweening where necessary.

Similarly you can import photos and trace them into sections for animation.

747 animation using photo tracing technique described

Another way to get a movie clip into a cartoony style - (only suggesting this as the original suggestion was dealing with frame by frame method - and the finished swf will be quite large but anyway) - import the clip into Flash - to get them into the needed keyframes - then get each frame into Photoshop - apply a filter like cutout and - same settings for each frame. Save each jpeg - give them naming convention incrementing the name of each one so they can be imported put back in the correct order into Flash. Should give a nice 'toony effect - a lot less work than drawing on each frame, but fat file size - i only use on movies that are deliverd on disk - loading time can be a killer!

Dan

Its cool. thanks man for