Need help with clay animation

[Steel Drummer]

Could anyone here show me some techniques to animate clay for a game? I tried but it's too hard to cut out the stuff I don't want in the picture.

[m0ds]

Ever heard of chroma key?

Make a blue plasticine man or whatever, and make sure the background and floor is bright green, or simply a colour that doesn't clash with your man. Then in photoshop etc, you can cut him out easily.

Then you'll have no problems.

[mätzyboy]

Yeah, use a solid color background, preferrably different from your character's colors. Then use the magic wand or magnetic lasso i photoshop. Or the magic wand or similar-to-magnetic-lasso-tool in the Gimp, if the Gimp is your cup of free tea...

[Steel Drummer]

Thanks, I guess that would work.

[sergiocornaga]

Also, try making all your clay grey and then colouring it in Photoshop (or the quality image manipulation program of your choice).

[Steel Drummer]

I tried coloring it in the Gimp, but it doesn't retain that 'clayish' looking texture.  :'( I also tried doing a paintbucket fill on certain areas, but it doesn't exactly do it right.  I'm thoroughly annoyed. I played a clay animation game called 'Platypus' and the guy that made that used Photoshop to color all the clay (which was grey). How can I do that with the Gimp but not lose the 'true' clay feeling?

[Tiki]

It would be very helpful if we could actually see the results you are currently getting.

A couple basic questions... when you color, are you using lowered opacity?  Are you using some kind of layer effect to color but retain the clay texture?

You're not just painting over with solid colors, are you?

Edit: Answer my questions if you want help, dingbat!

[Steel Drummer]

I used a gradient on certain areas and that had a slightly better effect. Can anyone tell me any better ways?

[Phemar]

Yodaman, just select the area you want to change the color of and change the Hue/Saturation.

[Kweepa]

Photoshop has a "Colorize" check box to go with the Hue/Saturation sliders. For greyscale images you'll need to check that (or the Gimp/PSP equivalent).