(Can’t see video? Go to Greyscalegorilla.com)
Mentioned In The Video
ElfYourself
My Dad’s Retirement Video
Screenvision – Disco Holiday
Make the JibJab Effect using After Effects and the Tracker
December 8, 2009
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23 Comments
How did you get that sexy Ae look?
Simon Gustavsson on December 8th, 2009 said...
Very good tutorial btw
Simon Gustavsson on December 9th, 2009 said...
Found it out.
Great Tutorial! AE makes tracking easy
Awesoome! You’re the man!
This tutorial would go great with the one Adam Everett did over on aetuts. http://ae.tutsplus.com/tutorials/basix/create-the-jibjab-effect/
Elie on December 8th, 2009 said...
I was going to post the exact same link hehe.
Very nice tutorial, thank you for the information, I woould like you to do a tutorial on how to make a very good camera mapping or camera projection in After Effects, I was trying the other day but it didn´t seem to work fine. I´ve got very blurry images and light problems.
Than you, Nick
Matt Frodsham on December 8th, 2009 said...
Andrew K’s got some good stuff on that over at videocopilot
Nice tut Nick – as always
I also found it useful while tracking motion to analyze 1 frame forward – when things go out of control – it is in the tracker control panel just on the right of the analyze button – when you press it – the engine tracks one frame at a time and somehow it is more accurate (weird stuff i say). So when things go too fast and AE looses the tracking point – just go to the last tracked point and go frame by frame – you won’t need to move the points manually. It works fine most of the time.
Jeppe Rasmussen on December 10th, 2009 said...
It seems to me that the AE tracker bases its search on the track feature from the FIRST tracked frame.
Whenever you stop the track and start it again it resets and bases the remaining track on the tracked feature as seen on THAT frame.
Whenever dealing with a tracked feature that changes a lot over time (rotation, brightness etc) I find it helpful to activate “adapt feature on all frames” in the options.
Your new lighting in there looks great. It seems like you closed the windows and have a consistent temperature, and a nice little kicker behind you.
Cheers!
The Gorilla on December 9th, 2009 said...
Thanks, Chris. The sky has been so grey and dark, that I don’t have enough light to film anymore. So, I set up a few daylight balanced fluorescents. One as a key with a piece of paper as the soft box. And one as a rim light, just dangling off a curtain rod. It’s an ugly looking setup, but it produces nice light eh? I’ll have to take a photo of it.
Hi Nick,
Nice tut & video of your dad!
I was wondering did you do the whole movie of your dad in AE or did you use Premiere to combine all the stuff together?
Great work!
Like to see more photograph tuts. How to setup the camera for nightshots, etc.
The Gorilla on December 9th, 2009 said...
I ended up doing the whole thing in AE. Between all the photos and film effect looks, I just thought it would be quicker to keep it all in AE.
Good Tut. If you have a screwing frame where the tracker jumps, I have also found it helpful just to open up the keyframes in the null and deleting them. This way key frames will tween over that short 3 frame period.
Just another solution.
The Gorilla on December 9th, 2009 said...
Great Great Tip, Calvin! I do that too. I should have done it here.
Nick,
How did you get the mouths to look appear so synced on the creamy orange site? Did you have the actors sing along to the music then roto them and track them to the face? Or did you use the liquify tool and warp an upper and lower lip that is pre com’d with teeth and a tongue? I am just curious because I have done some work like this and have really found the most solid way to animate a mouth to appear talking without doing tons and tons of keyframing.
The Gorilla on December 9th, 2009 said...
Hi, Thom.
The eyes and the mouths in that Screenvision short are actual filmed faces that we put in the giant photoshopped heads.
First, we filmed actors singing the song at half speed and then rotoscoped out their mouth and eyes to put on the heads. We then tracked those heads to the body similar to what you see in this tutorial.
Thom Schwartzhoff on December 9th, 2009 said...
When you say half speed do you mean you undercrank the camera to speed the footage. Which, would result in less frames to roto or over crank the footage to slow it down?
The Gorilla on December 9th, 2009 said...
We played the song slower for our actors to sing. That way, when we speed it back up. It has a cartoony effect.
Can’t tell what version you have of AE, but CS4 Production Premium comes with mocha for AE and I’ve found it much easier to track with mocha than with the AE Tracker. I recently had to do something similar with an old BeeGees video, and mocha was much better at tracking the upscaled from YouTube footage.
The Gorilla on December 9th, 2009 said...
Thanks for the tip, Winston. I have mocha, but decided to use the basic tracker so most people could follow along. Thanks for watching!
Hey nick, I would love to see a full blown tutorial of the effect that was achieved in the kingandcountry spot that you guys discussed on keyframers.
I’ve done this for laughs with a co-worker of mine in a continuing series…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qiy-8nSQjEg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrfl7OtkLwE
You can see a few other tutorials utilized in these clips as well!
“this is nice.e ……i like..”
for fixing the kyframs u can simply delete them
Dude you look exactly like your dad!!!!
The Gorilla on December 14th, 2009 said...
Crazy, right? I used to show up where he worked at the firehall and everyone would know who I was there to see without even asking.
very nice effect , but what appends when you want make the jibjab effect with a 3d head that follows the X Y Z rotation?
i´m realy curious about that, i´m sure
you know how to do it, thanks again .
The Gorilla on December 17th, 2009 said...
You would have to do a 3D track for that one. I would mount a helmet or a hat with a TON of tracking marks to do a 3D track. It’s WAY more complicated though. Do a search for 3D track that you should find something.
Oh man i’m going to have some FUN with this…
http://www.vimeo.com/8210784 (just to check if it worked, and to get a few ideas =P)
Great stuff Nick!
After watching this tutorial the other day, I was inspired to download a trial copy of After Effects and try to make a Christmas card video using the bobble head trick. Thanks for the tips, here’s the clip…
http://vimeo.com/8326957
gizmoz.com
I created an effect similar.
I had fun with this one.
http://vimeo.com/8893469
That´s really great! But it looks like JibJab do that on flash, is that right? Or can I do this effect on After Effects and then interact it with Flash?
This may sound simple to alot of people, but once you get the motion of the head how do you put in the mouth movement? Do you have to switch out pictures between the open and closed mouth? and if that is right do you have to parent both?