Written by Darryn Lowe | 01 August 2009
Posted in Multimedia

I'm not real big on plug-ins mainly because I like the right tool for the right job and I've rarely found a plug-in that does exactly what I want. Then a couple of days ago I was visiting NZMac.com and in the MacNN feed at the bottom of the screen I saw something that intrigued me... "Boris Continuum Cartoon Look package uses BCC filters". "Cartoon Look eh?" I said so I checked it out, the spiel was saying exactly what I was looking for and so I downloaded the demo and this is what I am reviewing.

First I want to say something about how awesome the developer is. I downloaded the demo a couple of days ago and last night I got an e-mail from Tyler Barg wanting to follow up. Tyler was so helpful and the fact that he was willing to take the time out just to find out what I thought and the fact that Tyler answered every one of my e-mails quickly just made me feel so good about wanting this product. Thanks Tyler.

Installation is done via the standard Installer tool. It is nothing more than a click click click install which makes it really easy to get this up and running. It installs into the /Library/Plug-ins directory so it can be shared with any app that supports it.

For this review I will be using Final Cut Express 4 but as you can see all of Apple and Adobe's video products are supported except of course iMovie. The new version of Final Cut Studio is supported which is really cool.

Running the plugin is really really easy. Select the video clip that you want to alter, go to Effects / Video Filters / BCC6 Effects and choose the filter you are after. Render the video and you're done. You can do more intensive changes if you want through the filters panel but if not just drag and drop and you're done.

The 14 day demo seems to be fully featured and so you have access to a lot of control of the plugins and there's no watermarking which is awesome for a demo because it means that you get a proper idea what your video is going to look like without being ruined by text over your image. BorisFX has done a wonderful job in this respect and I thank them profusely for allowing me to truly realise this is the right tool for my needs.

So now onto the effects.

First of all you need to know what this technique is called. It is called Rotoscoping and each of these filters are methods of rotoscoping because you are effectively tracing over live action footage. Rotoscoping is performed in a number of ways and is methods employed by Disney in the early days. For a good rundown of Rotoscoping checkout this Wikipedia article: Rotoscope.

Cartoon Look There is only one movie I need to tell you to checkout to understand this effect. It's a movie based on the Philip K Dick novel by the same name and it is called A Scanner Darkly. The look is pretty effective as it looks realistic while at the same time takes on a cartoon feel. This is actually the look that got me interested in this plugin and it does exactly what I wanted it to do so in my opinion the package is worth the cost just for this effect alone.
Charcoal Sketch Charcoal Sketch turns your image into a black and white video with heavy lines. The effect looks amazing in action and has some really cool potential for a wide variety of uses including music videos which actually leads me very nicely onto the next filter.
Pencil Sketch Now it's awfully easy to say this is nothing more than a lighter version of the Charcoal Sketch filter and for the most part you're right but then so is the use of real charcoal and real pencils. There is however more detail in the Pencil Sketch as you can see around my eyes in this shot. Phil mentioned in his Twitter post this "Just met the guy who did the drawing for A-Ha's "Take on me" video!". When I read that I thought how awesome because I love that video (and the band for that matter). This is the effect that was used in that video and it is such an awesome effect.
Water Colour Once again you can say this looks like the Cartoon Look but the colours are more vivid. Once again it is pretty true but at the same time there are some differences. The problem with this filter is the same one I've noticed on a lot of images that I've done the same thing on. It's kind of hard to see from these images but when moving the light goes all over the place in the water colour images. The Cartoon Look keeps the light relatively uniform even with the light changes but not so much in the Water Colour look.

 

The big question to answer is is the package worth $199US? This is dependant on your views. For time and money saved from doing this manually frame by frame yes. For ease of use, yes. For not having to learn a new product, yes. For the fact that it's saved me from more years waiting on this to be achieved for less cost, yes.

Seriously if you are wanting some really cool effects then I can't recommend this product more. If I had way more money I would even go so far as to buy the full $995US package but unfortunately I'm a lowly grunt and don't even come close to that. If I was doing video professionally I would get a business loan but I'm not so I won't. You will have a lot of fun with this package and your friends will be flawed by your videos so for that this package is well worth the cost. I've been looking for this sort of thing ever since I left the Amiga for the Mac and have had real need for it a couple of years ago. I wish I had this back then.

Here is a quick video to show you the plug-in in action. In order of appearance it is Normal, Cartoon Look, Charcoal Sketch, Pencil Sketch, and Water Colour.

http://gallery.me.com/lowededwookie#100361

UPDATE: I passed this review onto Tyler and he clarified a couple of things. First Tyler is a He. It's good to clarify that because I don't really want to offend anyone with my reviews.

Second, the $1095US I originally had is a package that includes another app. The package I was thinking of is only $995US.

Third I fixed up some grammatical errors I made because I kind of rushed this review before knocking off work and heading to my folks place in Taranaki. Hopefully it reads better now.