Best way to Extract ?

Hey construct753 - don't listen to all this negative bull**** - its perfectly possible to do it in Photoshop — and to batch process all your frames.

I know 3D animators who use Photoshop for this all the time. Theres various options within Photoshop for isolating your background. Perhaps the best one I can think of is the "Select Color Range" Command. Here you can set up a foreground colour of (as near as possible) the hue of your backround — (if I were you I would use a blue or white) - go into select color range ... choose an appropriate fuzziness value, make your backround layer 1, and hit delete -this will make the BG transparent.

Sounds too simple? - well it probably is, you wont get a perfect result every time, the secret is to experiment with the values until you have a pretty good cutout in a number of representative frames.

Another cruder option is to use the backround eraser tool - set to discontiguous - you might need a slight feather here. Choose a pixel which you know you want to lose in each frame (top left corner for example) and click once when setting up your action.

The main tip is with both techniques is to make sure that your backround ...

1 is a uniform color without any major shifts in tone

2 contains no elements of your foreground figures which you want to preserve as Utopian said. The tried and tested color here is blue (lime green sheeesh!)

If both of these techniques fail - choose a channel which seperates the foreground from the backround fairly well, duplicate it and apply a levels adjustment until you have a good outline. If you perform this action on each frame its actually one of the most reliable techniques for achieving this.

Of course your result wont be 100% perfect - but it will certainly be enough for the Flash output that you intend. As U23 said file size is going to be a major issue here.

Just a couple points of clarification...

The reason I recommended choosing a lime-green backdrop is because it's a color that's not likely to be present on an Action figure, and therefore should be easy to select via "Select---»Color Range..." without inpinging on the interior of the figure. If there is, in fact, a color close to lime green present in the finish of the character, then by all means choose a different color...one that is substantially different from ANY color present on the figure. As I understand blue-screening as used in the TV and film (film often uses a lime-greenish color of cloth or paint) industry, the color that gets matted out is more of a hardware/software combination, and is selected for deletion or overlay by a process somewhat different than that used in Photoshop. Have you never seen (this used to happen in the early years of the technique) where a TV weatherman wore a sports jacket that was close to the blue screen background and parts of the projected/overlayed map would appear on his jacket? This was caused by the fact that the Hardware/Software wasn't properly calibrated to the color and set lighting used.

Also, in case you weren't able to read between the lines...What I meant about cutting apart and articulating the various joints and limbs of the figure...I meant to say that you cut apart the IMAGES of them, within Photoshop, as you would similar to the paper cutouts in animation like South Park. As for your worries about appropriating the "Look" of South Park animation style....don't worry about it. Just because you might use a similar technique to make your figures appear to move means nothing...this is a technique that's been used since the beginning of film animation. Your movie WILL NOT look like South Park, because your artistic sensibilities will be different, you'll be using different characters and backgrounds and the timing of your character's movements will have a different feel. Just GO FOR IT...it'll be an arduous task—one I don't have the patience for anymore—but if you take good care you'll be rewarded with a piece you can be proud of, and you'll be certain to learn a lot about the techniques, and about yourself, in the process. And that is ALWAYS a good thing.

thanks guys thats great - wat a nice bunch you are!

just one thing tho markzebra, can i have that in english please?!...im still kinda getting to grips with channels, paths and god knows wat else so is there a tutorial you could point me too that would explain each step?....the channel idea sounds good but i wouldnt know where to start!

oh and while we are on the subject does anyone know of any good sites for this kind of thing (stopframe ani) as i went searching for inspiration and it seems this is somat that american kids do in high school with star wars figures for a larf - i am keen to do a series of mini shows (kinda like Futurama) which i could broadcast on the net etc...(wish me luck!!)

cheers again