How to Convert a Live Action Video into Anime

How i love ja ja ja ja japan anime Bad desin

"If you're looking to convert a live-action video into anime, there are several ways to go about it. Using specialized software like Adobe After Effects or AI-based tools such as EbSynth can help you achieve that anime-style look. You'll need to focus on frame-by-frame editing to really capture the unique aesthetic of anime. It can be a time-consuming process, but the results are often worth it!

For anyone who loves anime and wants to dive deeper into the world of animated storytelling, feel free to visit Aniwatch for a wide selection of anime series and films. Happy watching!"

Out of the box:

You can install https://snapcamera.snapchat.com/ on your computer and use the anime lens. Then install a tool like splitcam and apply the lens to an existing video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zoZ-Ap4FHc

@Mrtn Ritter(&) @Mylenium, (and @ShiveringCactus), I suggested an Effect for Boris FX to create called "BCC Anime Look": A filter that would be designed to emulate the look of rotoscoped Anime (Japanese: アニメ, IPA: [aɲime]). To give a Live-action Footage [an/that] Anime Look. As you can see in these videos (Below):

• https://youtu.be/023oOTQXipY 
• https://youtu.be/oUi829DFv4I 
• https://youtu.be/KRE4QZAXYu4

And guess what? Jonathan from Boris FX said that it's pretty cool and that he'll pass it along. However, if they end up making it, it would likely be months away or more. But I gave them some additional information that may help speed up its creation.

Here's a video that popped up on my YouTube front page a while back showing how one guy takes live action footage and converts it to animation.  He uses EBSynth to do the most of the frame-by-frame work.  

You could also look at using Character Animator to create a puppet driven by your webcam.  This isn't a full video-in-one-goal option, but gives you a lot of control.

This stuff is simply extremely laborious and if you refer to the "A Scanner Darkly" example Martin referred to you can see armies of artists doing extra roto despite the movie being specifically shot around the cartoon look. Same for pretty much any other VFX work - even if they were created with lots of green screen, markers and other techniques in mind, there's still armies of roto artists, matchmovers and so on sitting there for hours on end every day chewing through frame by frame. and those people have much more sophisticated tools than AE available... So for what it's worth, unless you are willing to put in the work, you cannot expect certain things to happen. If it's too much to do yourself, then find collaborators or hire other professionals, but otherwise you may simply need to get to grips with the fact that your cool Anime style YouTube video may take weeks or months even instead of just a few days.

Mylenium

You're asking too simple a question, no offense. This extends just as much to how you shoot your footage in the first place, what specific look you are after and what additional techniques you plan on using. As you would imagine, it's going to be much easier to convert a well-lit cosplay costume with bright colors in front of a green screen than doing the same for a dark everyday attire in a shadowy alley. Rinse repeat for other things that influence how you even acquire the footage like on-set markers for tracking, additional effects lighting, scene blocking or the camera's capabilities. Conversely, in post it matters how quickly and easily you are able to extract the characters and then how much time you want to spend to do further masking for color corrections, separating individual areas for color ing/ texturing, creating more shapes and masks for additional contours and speed lines and so on. In short: This is much more complex if it's supposed to look good and basically one of those things where advising on specific steps and techniques would require to know what look you have in mind vs. what footage you have/ are able to shoot. Outside that of course you can endlessly watch YouTube tutorials and then piece the techniques together to apply to your project, but there's really no way to explain this in 5 minutes in a few short sentences. These things take practice and experience.

Mylenium