Step-by-Step Guide
Cartoonify a movie in After Effects
Transform your world into living art. Turn your friends into cartoon characters. Or simply take a
poorly shot video and make it more interesting by adding cartoon-style effects. Inspired by
vintage music video and stylized TV ads, many editing systems include cartoon effects that
instantly apply a hand-drawn cartoon-like effect to your live motion video.
In this document, you work in Adobe After Effects® to apply the cartoon effect to video (Figure 1) and then
experiment with effect options to combine artistic styling with the power of live action.
No Effect
Cartoon Effect with
Fill & Edges
Cartoon Effect with
Edges Only
Figure 1 Cartoon effect applied in Adobe After Effects
Adding video to an Adobe After Effects composition
The first step is to add your source video to a new composition in Adobe After Effects.
To add video to an After Effects composition:
1. Start Adobe After Effects.
2. In the Welcome screen, select New Composition.
If the Welcome screen doesn’t open, then select
Composition > New Composition.
The Composition Settings dialog box appears.
Composition panel
Effect Controls
panel
Project panel
Effects & Presets
panel
3. Open the Presets pop-up menu and select a
preset that matches your source video.
If using the sample video Cartoon_effect_
sourceVideo.mp4, then use the preset NTSC DV
Widescreen.
4. Enter a name for the composition in the Composition Name box, and click OK.
5. Select File > Import > File.
6. Locate and select your source video file and click
Open.
The video appears in the Project panel, along with
your new composition.
Composition
timeline
Figure 2 After Effects workspace
7. Drag the video from the Project panel to the
Composition panel (Figure 2).
Cartoonify a movie in After Effects Step-by-Step Guide
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Adding the Cartoon Effect to a video clip
You add effects from the Effects & Presets panel or from the Effects menu.
To add the Cartoon Effect to a video clip:
1. In the Effects & Presets panel (Figure 3), expand
the Stylize group and drag the Cartoon effect onto
your composition in the Composition panel.
The effect is added to the clip. The Cartoon effect
works in three stages:
•First it smooths the image and removes minor
variations. The Detail Radius and Detail Threshold properties control this phase.
•It then finds edges in the image and applies a
stroke to them. You can modify properties in
the Edge and Advanced property groups to
control how the edges are determined and how
the strokes are drawn.
•Finally, it reduces the variations in luminance
and color in the image, simplifying the shading
and coloring. You can modify properties in the
Fill property group to control the luminance and
color.
Figure 3 Effects & Presets panel
2. To see only the edges created by the effect, open
the Render pop-up menu in the Effect Controls
panel and choose Edges (Figure 4).
Figure 4 Effect Controls panel
Cartoonify a movie in After Effects Step-by-Step Guide
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Adjusting the Cartoon effect properties
You can experiment with the parameters in the Effect Controls panel to fine tune the appearance of the Cartoon
effect.
Render
Choose between Fill, Edges, or Fill & Edges to control which operations to perform and which results to
display.
Detail Radius
Detail Radius is used to smooth the image and remove details. Increasing the Detail Radius value increases
the blurriness.
Detail Threshold
The Detail Threshold value determines how the Cartoon effect decides what areas contain features to be
preserved and what areas should be blurred by the full amount. A lower Detail Threshold value causes more
fine details to be preserved. A higher Detail Threshold value causes a more simplistic cartoon-like result, with
fewer details preserved.
Fill
If the Shading Smoothness value is 0, then the result is sharp transitions between values. A higher Shading
Smoothness value causes the colors to blend together more naturally.
The smoothing phase considers the amount of detail that exists in the original image so that areas that are
already smooth (such as the gradient of a sky) are not changed unless that Shading Smoothness value is low.
Edge
Edge properties determine what is considered an edge and how the stroke applied to an edge appears.
Threshold determines how different two pixels must be for the Cartoon effect to consider them to be one
either side of an edge. Increase the Threshold value to cause more areas to be identified as edges.
Width is the thickness of the stroke that is added to the edge.
Increase the Softness value to soften the transition between the edge’s stroke and the surrounding colors.
You can also control the Opacity of the stroke applied to the edge.
Advanced
Positive Edge Enhancement values sharpen the edges; negative values spread the edges.
When the Edge Black Level property is 0, only the pixels that have been identified as being part of an edge
receive a stroke; when Render is set to Edges, the image is white except in areas with a pure black stroke.
Increase the Edge Black Level property by a small amount to add shades of gray in the Edges phase of
rendering. Increase this property by a larger amount to approach a result that resembles white strokes on a
black background.
Edge Contrast controls the contrast in the grayscale representation of the edges.
If your computer includes a display card with a GPU that supports OpenGL, the Cartoon effect can use the
GPU to accelerate its processing.
Cartoonify a movie in After Effects Step-by-Step Guide
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Rendering and exporting the composition as a new file
Rendering is the creation of the frames of a movie from a composition. After applying your effects, you can render
and export the composition as a new video file. You can send the file directly to Adobe Premiere Pro for use in
another project, or use the Render Queue panel to export to a new video file for sharing.
Using the Render Queue panel, you can render the same composition to different formats or with different
settings, all with one click of the Render button. For example, you can output to H.264 for playback on a web
service or mobile device. You can also output the same composition to MPEG-2 for playback on a DVD.
To render and export the composition:
1. Drag the work area trim handles so the composition work area matches the length of the video
clip (Figure 5).
If the work area is longer than your composition
content, you’ll end up with black video at the end
of your clip.
Video clip
Work Area trim
handle
2. Save your After Effects project.
3. Select the composition in the Project panel and
select File > Export > Add To Render Queue.
Figure 5 Composition timeline
4. In the Render Queue panel, open the Output
Module pop-up menu and choose H.264 or
MPEG-2 (Figure 6).
By default, the new file is created in the same
directory as your After Effects project file. To
change the output destination click the Output To
file name, browse to a new folder, and click Save.
Figure 6 Render Queue panel
5. Click Render to create your new video file.
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