Cool and Simple Watercolor Effect For SL Machinima

This short machinima shows off a very cool post-production process that renders Second Life footage into liquid, hypnotically sensual imagery that reminds me of the dream-like animation in Linklater's Waking Life.  At first I thought it was made with a customized WindLight preset, but the creator, hadji Ling, told me it was way simpler than that: "I made that transformation with the Windows Movie Maker 2.6, with the option of Watercolor!" Ling messages me. I haven't seen this technique used in much SL machinima, but it could easily be used in projects which call for heightened, surreal visuals. 

Comments

[AL]

Could be effective if done well. Things like this walk the fine line between visually interesting and looking as though Photoshop threw up on your work. Proceed with creative caution, machinimakers!

[Mako Kungfu]

Linklater uses Rotoscoping, which is a very different look and technique than this (I totally agree with the previous commenter about Photoshop) with a long and rich history of creating deliberate styles and effects -- Disney used it on Snow White, and it was used to stick Forrest Gump into archival footage, etc. Not sure how this watercolor effect works exactly, but simply overlaying it over a machinima without being able to tweak individual frames or edit lighting and saturation isn't enough to be cool (no offense, but the above clip just looks muddy). Looking forward to seeing how/if others use it.

[Toxic Menges]

There are filters that can give this sort of effect in Final Cut (express and Pro), and while I think it can look fine, and have a wonderful effect to create an atmosphere, overuse could cause problems and also you would ned to make sure you were filming at a good resolution (HD!!) to maintain the viability of what was being filmed. I agree with Mako - proceed with caution - simplicity is sometimes the best master of imagination.