Comic Book Effect Plug-in

I'm trying to find a plug-in that will give video footage the 'comic book' look or effect or the pencil sketched look like the one used in the "Take On Me"(A-ha) music video. I've seen on recent TV ads with these effects, so I know that somewhere out there there may be a plug-in for FCP. If anyone out there knows, please point me in the right direction. Thanks!

The commercials on TV, for SCHWAB, employ the same technique used in WAKING LIFE and SCANNER DARKLY, is done with proprietary software, not a plugin for any editing application. TAKE ON ME was animated traditionally...WAAAAAAY back in the late 80's, when non-linear editing on computers didn't really exist.
Patrick has done something cool over in the Motion forum:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=4001306&#4001306
Or you can do it frame by frame with Illustrator:
http://www.illustratortechniques.com/imitating-a-scanner-darkly.html
Or you can update to FCP 5.1.4, install the Motion plugins for it (something you get for updating) and check out the line art plugins.
Shane

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Photo Booth Comic Book Effect Problem

Hi...
Well I write this because I think I've got a problem with Photo Booth's comic book effect... Thing is that when I use this effect before the picture is taken it all looks good... but after I take the picture it looks horrible, like too white... not like a normal comic book effect pic (I've seen my friends' pictures using this effect and they look good) I've tried using "shift+enter" to prevent the screen from flashing but it doesn't change the bad quality of the effect...
Does anybody know why this is happening?

Thank you for your response... but I've already thought about my clothes' color or background color or even light... if it's too bright or too dim... but nothing seems to fix the bad effect... I've tried bright light, not so bright, incandescent, fluorescent, light colored clothes, dark clothes! nothing helps, I've repaired permissions, I think I've even "uninstalled" photobooth and then got it back from the CD... it is just defective... I kinda hate this cause comic book effect is one of my favorites!... I wish someone else could help... I know I'm not the only one with this kind of prob cause I read this very same problem on yahoo answers...

Photo Booth Comic Book effect weirdness.

When I use the Comic book effect in Photo Booth, the black lines turn white in the saved image.
The effect displays properly live and saves properly when taking video, but when taking a picture, black lines turn white. Black dot tone stays black and actually black objects remain black, but linework created by the effect saves as white.
Any clues?

Thank you for your response... but I've already thought about my clothes' color or background color or even light... if it's too bright or too dim... but nothing seems to fix the bad effect... I've tried bright light, not so bright, incandescent, fluorescent, light colored clothes, dark clothes! nothing helps, I've repaired permissions, I think I've even "uninstalled" photobooth and then got it back from the CD... it is just defective... I kinda hate this cause comic book effect is one of my favorites!... I wish someone else could help... I know I'm not the only one with this kind of prob cause I read this very same problem on yahoo answers...

Comic book look

I'm trying to figure out how to give a comic book look to some of my footage. I'm NOT trying to do the cartoon effect seen on TV for some financial company, but the look of a comic book.
I've applied the half tone filter to one layer which gives me the print look. I've applied a layer above that and have been working with every filter I can think of but I'm just not getting what I want. I've tried vectorizing, reducing the number of colors, boosting levels . . .on and on.
Can anybody help me narrow this down? In addition to all of the standard Motion/FCP filters, I've also got Boris Continuum Complete 4.
(BTW, I know that FX Factory Pro has an excellent Comic Book plug in, but I don't have the $$$$$$ to buy that software at this point.)

Thanks for the info, Les.
According to the review, the filter DOES work in Motion as well as FCP. Looking at the demos on the Digital Anarchy site, I'm quite impressed by the quality and flexibility of this plugin.
However, there are two things that make me hesitant . . .
1) According to the review, the plugin is painstakingly slow. PAINSTAKINGLY!
2) At $299, this is out of my price range as an amateur.
If you can look past those two items, this DOES seem to be a high quality product.
For now, I'm getting some very good results with Patrick's plugin . . .the more I experiment, the better quality I'm getting.

Adobe products recommend to make comic book pages?

I am a graphic novel writer & comic designer.
I have been told that many of Adobe's products can be used
to create drafts for comic book pages. But some people tell me
Illustrator is the best, others say In Design is the way to go and
I have even heard Photoshop works as well. I guess I am just
look for some advice from a Adobe expert. What Adobe product would you recommend to use for making comic book pages?

Photoshop for line cleanup, inking, flats and coloring, and a few people use it for text.
Illustrator for creating text boxes and lettering, and some people use it for layout.
InDesign for layout and publishing, and some people use it for text effects as well.

Web Comic Book help

Hello
Can anyone suggest a good way to put up a web comic? Is there a program or plugin that can navigate the Previous / Next buttons? Or do I need to create this on my own in iWeb? I have played around with the slideshow option, but the image size too small.
I need a simple way of doing this. I can draw, write, etc, but ask me about HTML I am clueless.
Any help here would be great.
Thank you.

I can think of two possible ways you could add your comic book(s) to iWeb.
1 - use Issuu.com. An example of an online document can be seen here.
2 - a similar effect can be had using the PageFlip flash presentation (sort of like Issuu) as shown in this demo page: PageFlip.
I think Issuu would be easier to use although I've not used it. Roddy as an example of a PDF thru Issuu this this page of his iWeb for Musicians site: Publish a Promo PDF on ISSUU. Music optional of course.
Or you can put one comic page on an iWeb page and create your own text based hyperlinks to the next or previous page.
In case you might be interested in some flash types of presentations:
SimpleViewer and Flash Album Exporter
Flash Album Exporter Postcard and AutoViewer Slideshow Themes
Jalbum - has over 100 different themes/skins for presentation.
OT
Message was edited by: Old Toad

After Effects Plug Ins

Hi Guys,
Ok, what I am about to ask is something I guess is a very "Personal-preference" type question, but here we go anyway..( if nothing else, it might give you something to read! :-)..)
I have mentioned on a few posts that the project I am busy with, is for the creation of a new television series. We are a very small company, and have started out from scratch- the best place to start from I think.. Anyway, the question that I have, is around After Effects plug-ins.
I would like to invest some money in plug-ins but would like to get a feel from the forum first, as to what, where, when and why.
After all the many millions of tutorials and books I have seen, "Red Giant" is a name that crops up all the time. I am looking on their site, and am getting rather overwhelmed with the amount of plugins they offer.
I am going to "pre-guess" that someone will answer this question by stating that it all depends what I want to do at the end of the day, so I will jump the gun on that one and state that I will definately be looking into the "Keying Suite" on offer, as a lot of my work - actually, the biggest part - will be compositing from green and blue screen footage.
The other packages caught my eye, because I just want to own the world (I cannot play any computer game without completing it 100% - getting all the collectable's and extras - so that part of my personality is now bleeding into work!) - and as a result, I am looking at the "Effects Suite" and "Trapcode Suite"
So, to end this rather long "Question", can anyone advise me, from their experience, are the extra products worth while, or can After Effects pull a pretty believable similar effect by itself?
Thanks for your time,
Pierre

If you do keying a lot, you could need help. Not sure whether I would actually consider the complementary tools that much, as it is easy enough to build a light wrap from scratch and the Refine Matte effect ever since CS5 is pretty sophisticated as well as there are of course all the otehr channel, matte and blur tools, but Primatte is useful and may help to create a key where Keylight fails. On that note, you might also consider RevisionFX' Re:Fill to mend holes and smooth keying edges the smart way as well as RSMB Pro to remove motion blur and reintroduce it later. And the adaptive blurs in SmoothKit are also handy. The other Red Giant suites are probably not essential to you. Trapcode is motion graphics centric, anyway, and unless you neet all those particle and lighting effects, you won't get much else out of it. Similarly, the FX suite is not essential IMO. Half of that can be built from scratch or with some presets from the web, it may just be a bit more clunky and slower. if you realyl must send more money to RG and do not want to buy more RevisionFX tools like DeNoise or Twixtor, the Magic Bulelt tools would be better plus you get their color correction tools as well.
Mylenium

Creating manga comic book black background (help)

hi all. new user here.
i have to create a 24 x 36 inch posterboard and i want to put /images/ "in" /cells/ like in a manga comic book. basically i want to have variously sized and variously proportioned WHITE AREAS (with a slightly rounded corners, not square) and then the area between these cells (for instance 1/8" spacing) to be all black.
then I would place images /behind/ the white rounded cells.
does that make sense? I have had success doing a normal board on an all white background (with some help) while using the demo of InDesign and I am wondering if anyone can help me get started with a description of how I might do this and some Adobe InDesign terminilogy that goes along with this so I can read up about the commands in the Help documentation.
thanks in advance for any help with this.
- jon

Your background is going to be an "unassigned" frame (drawn with the rectangle tool -- the one without the X in it). Do you understand bleed? As far as the fill color, that would depend on how this is going to be printed, and if there is other color on the page. It will look better as a "rich black" which is a four-color mix, but you pay more for four-color prints than just black and white. If you are using a rich black, the exact formula can vary widly depending on the printing method (and I would ask the printer for a recommendation), but a pretty "safe" mix would be 50c, 40m, 40y, 80k. You will want to put this on its own layer at the bottom of the stack and lock the layer to avoid inadvertently using the frame to hold something (see below). you can create this first, then make a new layer on top, or do it last and drag it to the bottom of the stack.
Your image frames are drawn with the frame tool (the one WITH the X) . You could create an Object Style for them that includes the corner effect to save time. Frames drawn with the frame tool do not respect stroke and fill settings, but one of the nice things about ID is that your unassigned frames can be used to hold text or graphics, so you can also add a fill color to the object style and use the Shape tool (the same one you use for the background) instead of the frame tool if you find you need the white fill. And yes, you can copy and paste these smaller frames, or add them to a library, or save some sizes as snippets in a folder to drag into your poster. You can save a "blank" poster (just the background and the empty "cells" as a template and use the same layout for as many posters as you like, too.
You will Place the images into the cells, unless you need to combine text and image (not already combined in the image) in the cell. For that you would place the image someplace convenient, like the pasteboard,and add text in a text frame or a text frame you've drawn to look like a speech baloon, then position the two as you want them relative to each other, select both, group, cut, select the cell frame, and "paste into."
You'll find the online help at http://help.adobe.com/en_US/indesign/cs/using/index.html
I also recommend you buy a copy of Sandee Cohen's Visual QuickStart Guide to InDesign since you seem to be a real beginner.

Is there an application that can keep track of my comic books ?

I have a few comic books , and want to be able to scan in my comics in to a list.

No comment on Photoshop/Elements aside from that being like using a screwdriver to hammer a bolt into a lemon. Possible, but probably messy and likely to leave a sour taste...
Now, on to the InDesign portion of the question.
You do not need for your editors to have InDesign.
Option 1) Use MS Word (or any other text editor) to edit the copy of all the stories. Pro: common app that you already have. Con: unable to see results in final file.
Option 2) Use Adobe InCopy to edit the copy of all the stories. Pro: InCopy can 'open' InDesign files to allow editors to see the effect of their copy changes. Con: new application to purchase and learn.
InCopy is made for what you have in mind, so long as the minor editing is all text.
http://www.adobe.com/products/incopy/
HTH
-mt

How do you add pictures instead of video into the comic book theme?

I'm doing a project for school and I have to use the comic book theme in iMovie. In the box above the text where you would usually add a movie or video, I want to put photos. How do I do that? Thanks

Does it allow you to drag a photo into that window? Try it with a picture out of iPhoto maybe and see if it will allow you to drop it into the placeholder area.

After Effects error: crash occurred while invoking effect plug-in "Looks" URGENT!

My name is Tyler and i'm a Mult-Media Editor in training. Just recently meaning just this project i've been getting this error "After Effects error: crash occurred while invoking effect plug-in “Looks”." every time i try to render. If i try to remove the clip where it messes up and replace it with another it will just mess up in another spot.
Screen Shot Here:http://gyazo.com/794429fd1091973c8a296a27d2af6fab.png
Information:
AE: After Effects CS5 (64-bit)
OS: Windows Home Premium (64-bit)
RAM: 8gb
Processor: 1st Gen. i7 Quad-Core
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce GT 320
Updates: Installed All Updated For Adobe Products
Source Footage: Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 @ 60fps using UT Video Codec YUV 420
Worked Before? Yes
Open GL: My open gl is not enabled
I've read other forums and watched tutorials. I've already done the following. (Not in order used)
1. Downgrade Magic Bullet Looks from 1.4.3 to 1.4.2 (Didn't Work)
2. Upgrade Magic Bullet Looks to MBL 2.0 from Magic Bullet Suite 11 (Didn't Work)
3. Uninstall my gfx card and re-install it with the newer version (Didn't Work)
4. Reset AE preferences by pressing alt+shift+ctrl on the shortcut (Didn't Work)
5. Change render settings from H.264 -> .AVI (Didn't Work)
6. I've deleted "AE_OpenGL" from my After Effects folder (Didn't Work)
My Composition:
http://gyazo.com/53c7a2789a752cfba7e908bed31d7c01.png
http://gyazo.com/da0cacaf4ef6d7e3276b6aa45b77da79.png
The look file is not that complex but i don't know if it'll help but there it is.
Look File Settings:
http://gyazo.com/25346bb318edadc54e09273977964c7d.png
I've never had this problem before and hope that someone has a solution to this problem... if so please post an answer. I don't know if its because i put the plug in on all of my clips and then made an adjustment layer with another Magic Bullet Looks or if it's my clips fault but i just dont know what to do.
-Tyler

It sounds like Looks is only crashing on this project. If that is so then it's most likely a problem with one of your video clips. Either there's a corrupted frame or some other codec glitch that's throwing the errors. I'd suggest replacing footage items with temporary footage. You could even use solids. Replace one at a time, then undo, until you find the footage that's causing the crash. Then either re-compress that footage to another codec or replace it.
If Looks is crashing on every type of footage then you need to pursue other options that are more system related.

Best way to create a comic book ebook

I've been assigned the chore of creating ebooks for my company's line of comic books. Many of the comic books have spreads that get chopped in half in single page PDFs, and if you view them as "two page continuous cover" mode the spreads still get split up... so, what's the reccomended way to create an ebook where the spreads need to be preserved? Put a blank page at the beginning? Run the spreads out as "spreads" and the rest of the pages as single pages? Any tips by a professional ebook maker would be appreciated!

Creating the form itself is really only half the job.
You can have a marvelous form created using html and DW's built in form items. Those items can be in a table, or not, that part is up to you. The next step is making the form "do something".
The simplest way to make a form work, is a mailto: link in the form action attribute, but it's the absolute worst way to go. Mailto: links require the viewer to have an email client installed and set up on the computer they're using to submit your form. If they don't (as in the case of Gmail, htomail, yahoo, etc mail users) when they click Submit, absolutely nothing will happen.
Another drawback of using a mailto: link for your form submission is that email address is now open to every spam email harvester on the internet. If you like certain "blue pill emails" then there wouldn't be an issue, but if you are like the majority of society, you won't be sending funds to any Nigerian doctors either and won't want to be spammed constantly.
Personally, I use the Formmail script, available for free at http://www.tectite.com for pretty much all of my html forms. As long as your server has PHP installed (most do) the Formmail script will work very well for you. They have a ton of "How To" info on their site and the script itself is very robust with loads of features you can use, or not, at your discretion. They also have a very well documented troubleshooting section and a searchable forum that take care of the most common issues you run into.
Your next step is "find out what server scripting language you have available on your server". From there, you'll need to find/write a compatible script, then attach your form to it.

Adding pages to comic book

I'm trying to make a project using Commic Book. It only seems to give me the option for 2 pages: "Comic Book Issue" and "Directed By." How can I add more pages that use the comic book template????
Thanks
Peter

If you make a project using the Comic Book Theme, then under Titles, you have the first two rows of Titles you can use and stay consistent with the theme: Comic Book, Credits 1, Credits 2, Credits 3, Lower Third 1,2 and 3, and Simple.
Then, in the Transitions, you can use Comic Book 1,2,3, and 4. So you have at least 12 ways to use the Comic Book theme before repeating.

After Effects error:crash occurred while invoking effect plug-in"scripting"

   I made up a bat file with 8 commands like" afterfx -m -r ...." .
   It will startup 8 AEs and render my work. But when I double the commands with starting 16 AEs,7-8 of them are carshed,says "crash occurred while invoking   effect plug-in"scripting" .
   And "After Effects error: Crash in progress. Last logged message was:<2312><ASL.ResourceUtils.GetLanguageIDFromRegistry><0>Unable to obtain the User 'Language' registry key at: Software\Adobe\After Effects\10.0\Defaulting to 'en_US'."
   I am confused for a few days. Need help here.
Warm regards

Good question, but I would suspect that the previous instances simply never correctly unload and/or parts of the auxiliary services like dynamiclinkmanager or qt32server remain active/ loaded, ultimately causing a conflicht or simpyl chewing up all your memory...
Mylenium

After Effects error: crash occurred while invoking effect plug-in "particular"

Hi, I was trying to following the Kramer's tutorial "The Ring" in AFx (http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials/the_ring/), that involves the use of Trapcode Particular, and all went well..
Then I've customized it, not drawing a circle, but a square, and after a while AFx started to crash very frequently reporting this message:
After Effects error: crash occurred while invoking effects plug in "particular"
this happens only when I work on the compositions with particular plug-in.
I'm working on my "old" iMac OSX version 10.4.11
2.33 GHz Intel Core 2 duo
1 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
with CS3, open GL disabled (because not supported)
thanks for any help!

I'm guessing that you're running out of RAM.
The system requirements state 2GB as a minimum (I know the page links to CS4, but it seems the CS3 one's aren't available).
Have you made sure to run all necessary updates?
I know you've been able to work with 1GB for awhile, but you've probably been pushing that envelope.
What are your comp specs (frame size, frame rate, etc...)?
Are you trying to view at full res, or lower?
Have you modified your RAM preferences?

Comic Book Effect Plug-in

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