A while back I shot some video for an art project, but the idea never panned out so I shelved it. Later on I Imported the video from miniDV to my computer to learn a little iMovie and pass some time, but I was never really happy with it. Then I imported it to Flash and began to create an animation that took over 30 hours to create. The video wasn’t entertaining by itself, but in Flash I was able to trace individual frames by hand (with Wacom of course) and create a flipbook style animation. Plus I deleted the video from the library and ended up with a small file size animation that looked completely hand drawn. Later on I can even take the Flash file and add extra effects and create the impression of a fully animated film.

But how? Find out after the jump.

Import your video file to Flash via File > Import > Import to Stage. Select your video and click Open. Choose Embed Video in Macromedia Document and click Next. Feel free to Edit your video here, but remember bandwidth won’t matter because the video will be deleted before you go to the web. Now you may get a warning saying flash wants to add frames to you animation to make the timeline long enough to accommodate the video. Click yes.

Now you can trace each frame (yes this takes a long time, but looks cool when you finish). Stepping frame to frame will advance through the video while advancing through your document.

Another option would be to split the video to sequential images in another application, such as Adobe Premiere, then import and Trace Bitmap.