How I Animated This Video
Why Hacker News recommends it
Cited in AI-art and video-stylization threads as an example of a manual, artist-driven alternative to AI tools, and as a demo of EbSynth.
What it is
Animator Joel Haver explains how he makes his short films using rotoscoping and the EbSynth tool, along with the software he uses. The method is a labor-intensive, frame-by-frame process.
Recommended by 0 HN commenters across 0 different months, 2022 to 2025.
What Hacker News said
Cites Asooka · 2022-05 · on “We asked 100 humans to draw the DALL·E prompts”
A good example are Joel Haver's videos on youtube. He explains his process here: [this video] . He produces animations by rotoscoping live footage, with only a few keyframes being done by hand and the rest by AI, using something similar to style transfer.
Cites keawade · 2022-07 · on “MegaPortraits: One-Shot Megapixel Neural Head Avatars”
We've got AI assisted rotoscoping already and while it looks a bit janky at times its still a whole lot faster than doing it all by hand. [this video]
Cites Hamcha · 2022-09 · on “VToonify: Controllable High-Resolution Portrait Video Style Transfer”
As someone who is in touch with a lot of people acting as VTubers in order to keep privacy while being able to express themselves, I'm very happy to see this! EbSynth gave Joel Haver a trademark style[1], and I feel this might be the next step. 1. [this video]
Cites Cipater · 2023-01 · on “ChatGPT Can't Kill Anything Worth Preserving”
>There's a popular youtuber named Joel Haver who films videos, then uses an AI tool to convert them into animations, so they can be magically put into a space or fantasy setting. Hang on, AI tool? Joel Haver converts every frame manually. His method is the literal opposite of using an AI tool. It's incredibly painstaking. [this video]
Cites wonger_ · 2025-11 · on “Ask HN: How to generate flipbook-style animations from video?”
Looks like rotoscoping: [LINK] . The closest you would get is maybe an edge detection filter. Or AI rotoscoping: [LINK] . Or maybe EbSynth, as demoed by this guy: [this video] But it never looks as nice as the hand-drawn way.