3D Motion Effect on Still Images?

[Yorae]

Example:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=du76FLrY ... plpp_video

The effect in question is all over this video and first appears at 00:09. Its sort of like a 3D animation effect of a still images.

I've seen this being done in a lot of MMVs and vids that use fanart, so I am suspecting its a filter/plugin in an editting software somewhere, but I might be wrong.

Can someone maybe point out how that is done? I don't think its simple titling/skewing of the image. How can I go about doing that in After Effect?

Thanks in advance

[Eake4]

Actually it is probably just simple tilting and skewing of images. the editor did have an effect where the characters came out separately so he probably had 2 images, masked them and blended them together to make something like that. If it was a simple effect in AE everyone it wouldn't be easy to control.

[Brad]

This is basically achieved by taking your image(s), cutting out limbs to their own layers, then just animating position and rotation in AE. You can push this further with setting up 3D layers and cameras. But yeah it's a fairly simple and subtle way to add dimension and life to still images.

[Hiro The Dragon King]

If you would like to see a more professional and extensive use of that effect, there was a documentary on Bill Hicks released a few years ago that used the effect throughout most of the movie.

Here is a trailer for the movie: American: The Bill Hicks Story

[HalOfBorg]

I did similar things (though mine were less subtle) in "Wrong Way, Anime" (the musicians flags) and in "Legend of the Anime" (the spider was a still image - I animated it just as Brad said, using Sony Vegas)

[Enigmo]

Well yeah, as others have said it looks like simple masking and transforming. You can move certain limbs using the puppet tool in AE, but that can go wrong and is slightly more complex; I wouldn't use it unless I know how to fully control it. But yeah, say you had a render/mask of a character, you would mask out their arm and make it have its own layer and just rotate it or how ever else you want to transform it.

[Gorz]

This tutorial might help you..it won't answer fully your question though, but I'm sure it covers a few basics of still image animation, hope it help

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ptd9L2pdK24