I was laying in bed one night and I had this brainwave of chroma keying GoAnimate characters with live action video. I was sure it could be done but how effective would it be? Obviously there are many limitations with this idea but for the moment have a look at my very rough experimental video below and I'll get onto explanation after.
Firstly if you are not familiar with what Chroma Keying is then you may be more familiar with the concept of green screening in relation to movie special effects. The terms are almost interchangeable. Both record their subject against a single background colour, usually green, which is then keyed out and replaced with another video image.
In the case of my video above I created a GoAnimate Animation which animated GoAnimate's character, Kate, on a green background. See the animation below.
GoAnimate.com: Chroma key test by etourist
Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com. It's free and fun!
I then used CamStudio to screen capture the animation to an AVI video file (which I later had to convert to an MPG file due to compatibility problems with my editing software. Somewhere in this conversion the colours of the animation were corrupted hence the greenish tinge on Kate in the final video).
Finally I used video editing software that supports Chroma keying to combine my animation with the video footage of myself and the frog van I shot earlier.
I'm not pretending this animation is fantastic. It's just a very rough test that I put together in a couple of hours. Call it a proof of concept. This can be done.
It's nowhere near as good as Roger Rabbit and never will be since there's no scope for adding shadows and shading to GoAnimate's pre designed characters. However as an idea it opens up another possibility for GoAnimate's platform and those of us who like to go beyond the boundaries and not settle for just what we're given when we tell our stories.
I'm not sure if I'll expand on this idea into a fully finished animation. When I first thought of it, the idea of doing a Willie Nelson Music video with myself and GoAnimate's Willie Nelson theme had a lot of appeal (The Extraordinary Tourist staring in a Video of Willie Nelson's song On the Road Again perhaps?).
If you are a GoAnimate Animator and you can see the potential in using this technique then give it your all. I'd love to see someone try this who can do it much better than me. Please let me know if you do.
Firstly if you are not familiar with what Chroma Keying is then you may be more familiar with the concept of green screening in relation to movie special effects. The terms are almost interchangeable. Both record their subject against a single background colour, usually green, which is then keyed out and replaced with another video image.
In the case of my video above I created a GoAnimate Animation which animated GoAnimate's character, Kate, on a green background. See the animation below.
GoAnimate.com: Chroma key test by etourist
Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com. It's free and fun!
I then used CamStudio to screen capture the animation to an AVI video file (which I later had to convert to an MPG file due to compatibility problems with my editing software. Somewhere in this conversion the colours of the animation were corrupted hence the greenish tinge on Kate in the final video).
Finally I used video editing software that supports Chroma keying to combine my animation with the video footage of myself and the frog van I shot earlier.
I'm not pretending this animation is fantastic. It's just a very rough test that I put together in a couple of hours. Call it a proof of concept. This can be done.
It's nowhere near as good as Roger Rabbit and never will be since there's no scope for adding shadows and shading to GoAnimate's pre designed characters. However as an idea it opens up another possibility for GoAnimate's platform and those of us who like to go beyond the boundaries and not settle for just what we're given when we tell our stories.
I'm not sure if I'll expand on this idea into a fully finished animation. When I first thought of it, the idea of doing a Willie Nelson Music video with myself and GoAnimate's Willie Nelson theme had a lot of appeal (The Extraordinary Tourist staring in a Video of Willie Nelson's song On the Road Again perhaps?).
If you are a GoAnimate Animator and you can see the potential in using this technique then give it your all. I'd love to see someone try this who can do it much better than me. Please let me know if you do.