If you're watch TV much, you have undoubtedly seen some of the Charles Schwab commercials, where people talk about their investment portfolios, but look very much like well-drawn cartoons.  Here's a frame from one:

These commercials immediately caught my attention, and I wondered how they do it.  Well, it's not too surprising that it's a video effect, and it turns out that similar effects can be obtained and used in your own videos for free.

FlipInFocus members can watch this video to learn how to use Windows Movie Maker to edit their Flip videos, and there is an effect in the Vista version called 'Watercolor' that has a similar impact.  Here's a shot of your humble host given such treatment:

If you use another video editor, you still may be in luck -- whether on a Mac or a PC. It turns out that there is an effects company called NewBlueFX which is giving away a free effect they call the "Cartoonr" as a promotion.  On Windows, it is installable for the following editors:

• Adobe Premiere
• Adobe After Effects
• Avid Media Composer/Xpress
• TGV EDIUS
• Avid Liquid
• Pinnacle Studio
• Corel Video Studio
• Sony Vegas (32-bit and 64-bit).

Note that promotions don't tend to last forever, so if you're interested you should grab this and install it as soon as possible. Go here for the download:

http://www.newbluefx.com/cartoonr/

When you install it, you provide an email address, and NewBlueFX sends you a key to unlock it, so just downloading it might not be enough. Also, as promotions go, the price is that you will get put on their mailing list.

However, this is a great effect that has many variations.  Here are two that I used in Sony Vegas:

And another, very different example, but kind of cool: