creating a rotoscope walking-cycle

[mistermor]

hi guys!
i am new to AGS. i want to create a walking cycle. but- i want to do it with a Rotoscope technic (painting on a real video picture). i was googled how to do it, but i did not find any useful guide. so i started things myself. i shot a movie of me walking, then edited it with a painting program- i cut the scene into layers, and then moved every layer so it would match the previous one (so that i will look at the same spot, at any picture). BUT THEN WHAT?
i could have start drawing, but i cannot cycle the animation in a painting software, right? i know i can do that with a Flash software, but i wonder if there is a simpler and more Old Shool program for animating.
and- is there a guide that can tell me how to do a rotoscopic walking-cycle? (i also like the video-animation walking-cycle, like it was done at Police Quest 4, and a Guide to that thing would be great to).

thanks!

[cosmicr]

okay the way sierra did it was with a blue/green screen. It definitely sounds like you're on the right track, with what you've done so far.

I am building a green screen at home and will be attempting this shortly also.

as far as animating goes, I dont have a lot experience, but maybe try animation shop pro (the one that comes with paint shop pro). I used it years ago and it seemed okay.

Would love to see what you come up with!

PS has anyone else successfully used video capture to create their animations?

[OneDollar]

I've been looking at Synfig Studio recently as a free alternative to Flash, and that can do it (tutorial). Looks like quite a steep learning curve though, and the software isn't particularly user friendly yet. Still, it works with vectors and tweening, so you could potentially get quite a smooth animation from relatively few frames, then export as a series of .png files to edit externally.

Otherwise there's several different graphics packages out there, some of which will allow you to do animation, though I think most are commercial. There's a list in this thread. The free version of Graphics Gale for example will let you animate in a series of frames, although it won't let you export to a .gif file so you'd have to finish your animation then export each individual frame manually - though at least you'd be able to preview the animation while you were working on it and use onion skining.

[mistermor]

OK i finally made it. i was not looking at Synfig studio or gale, but i did it with macromedia flash 8.
i have just shot a short video of me walking, then flash let me to cut the video into  frames and use it as a reference.
then what i did was to paint every frame with Flash brush tool. it was a hard work, and took me almost 2 hours for each walk-view. (i did the "back" and the "left/right" so far). the resaults look rotoscopic, and it was hard for me to put details (at the face for example), but i want to create a 320X200 game, so it is not that matter.

after painting each photo, i deleted the reference (video), and arrange every paint to the exact same place as the frame before (the onion skin helped me). i also used small red dots as landmarks (on the head for example or on the stomach) so i knew how to orient my paintings.
at the final stage i matched the first painting (the first frame of the walking cycle) to be a flawless continuation of the last frame.

i used this youtube link to see how to use the onion skin method only! (this guy is using a different technic for the walk-cycle).

mybe i will upload a youtube clip soon, so i will be able to show you how it looks like.