HACKER Q&A
📣 meerab

How to generate flipbook-style animations from video?


I’ve been seeing a lot of hand-drawn flipbook animations on YouTube/TikTok. For example:

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Ub_ZmzOrh5g

The creators say they spend 3-5 days drawing this. How do I generate this animation say in Python? Any recommended models, libraries, or workflows?

I am thinking ffmpeg to extract images -> pose estimation -> Line art -> Assemble into Video

  👤 wonger_ Accepted Answer ✓
Looks like rotoscoping: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotoscoping.

The closest you would get is maybe an edge detection filter. Or AI rotoscoping: https://pld.reddit.com/r/vfx/comments/1h9wjdv/have_any_ai_ro.... Or maybe EbSynth, as demoed by this guy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tq_KOmXyVDo

But it never looks as nice as the hand-drawn way.