Ever find yourself longing for the disheveled good looks of a drug-addicted Keanu Reeves living in dystopian, near-future Orange County?

This past summer’s A Scanner Darkly used a beautiful posterized live-action animation style that gave it a thoroughly unique look. The effect took thousands of hours of work and a frame-by-frame repainting of the movie in a process called digital rotoscoping.

Fortunately, applying the technique to a photo isn’t nearly as time consuming, and with this tutorial from one of the film’s animators, you’ll be well on your way.

The A Scanner Darkly Effect
www.illustratortechniques.com/imitating-a-scanner-darkly.html

p.s. Our pal Nick Gray tells us Amazon’s got some crazy great pricing on Sandisk’s superduper fold-it-up-and-stick-it-in-your-usb-port-no-card-reader-necessary memory cards: $25 for the 1GB (was $40) and $49 for the 2GB (was $90). Find out why we love these in our 2006 Holiday Gift Guide.

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