Animate a Still Image with Adobe After Effects 8.0 Puppet Tool

Studio Monthly by Shuyi Wu This tool is fairly simple to use, but depending on what you want to do, it might take some time and effort to achieve a smooth and realistic motion. This tool was originally designed to animate graphic shapes, but I find it works just as well with live footage. STEP 1: Prepare the comp

Let’s create a new composition and import footage of a character, preferably with embedded alpha. Puppet Tool only works on still images. When working with live footage, you’ll need to split the footage into two layers: a footage layer and a still frame layer with alpha, where you’ll apply the Puppet Tool effect. In this tutorial, we’ll use our "Karate Man" character that we created for Adobe to help them demonstrate and promote After Effects version 8.0 as part of Creative Suite 3 (CS3). However, our example can apply easily to any character of your choosing. read more...