Not only am I struggling to find a tool to do this, I'm struggling to find the best way to explain it.

Basically I need a tool that will allow me to cature raw motion so I can replicate it in a 2D animation tool, I currently use (Synfig) which works great until I can afford to outlay on a paid tool (probably Spine)

The tool I'm looking for....Say I wanted to animate a 2D hero with a run animation, I usually just wing it and do the movement myself, which looks ok but I'd rather get it right. So I'm looking for a tool that will allow me to take a video of a runner from youtube or where ever and overlay a skeleton for one full rotation of his legs\a step. Then I can replicate this motion in my 2D software. Does anyone know of such a tool? Or am I just dreaming?

There are motion tracking equippment and software available, but most often for 3d animation only. Take a look at blender for example. But this seems like a very adventurous way of doing 2d animation.

The advantage of 2d is, that it is flat, therefor capturing a vidio with your mobile phone will already give you enough resources to work with. Doing this with 3d motion tracking environment would be overkill. Then just use an animation tool which allows using either a background video or atleast background images as reference for your animation.

yeah, its that reference that I'm after not so much a 3D motion capture just a way of grabbing the general movement for certain animations. Short of splitting a video in to frames and drawing over each one with mspaint

Hmm... I would try to solve it like this (I don't know a specialised tool for this):

1. Use blender as video editor !

2. Take some input footage.

3. For the final video use the following settings:

3.a: render steps (don't export every frame if necessary)

3.b: scale down the final format to a reasonable size (eg 128x128)

3.c: instead of using a output video codex, export as single frame png files

Then you have a sequence of 128x128 images of a given video footage. Afterward use gimp and its layer functionality to paint your sprites on top of the given image files.

Just an idea, I'm certain, that there are better soluations around

I've found it!!!!!

http://www.kinovea.org/

(free tool meant for sports analysis)

works a treat, grab a video from anywhere, draw on it frame by frame, playback and reproduce the motion in Synfig/Spine. As far as I've got with the process so far its taken my animations to another level

I've found it!!!!!

http://www.kinovea.org/
(free tool meant for sports analysis)

works a treat, grab a video from anywhere, draw on it frame by frame, playback and reproduce the motion in Synfig/Spine. As far as I've got with the process so far its taken my animations to another level

It's good that you found the tool you need, just remember that even Motion capture animations are often refined and improved by animation artists.

Real life movements tend to be boring, that is why actors spend there whole life learning how to improve movement to tell a better story.

I recommend you search Acting for Animators books, thy will help you reach a even higher level.

It's good that you found the tool you need, just remember that even Motion capture animations are often refined and improved by animation artists.

Real life movements tend to be boring, that is why actors spend there whole life learning how to improve movement to tell a better story.

I recommend you search Acting for Animators books, thy will help you reach a even higher level.

Yeah I figured but it gives me a good place to start/tweak rather than the limping Pigeon I had before. I'll take your suggestion and look at some books however, thanks

JASC Paint Shop Pro package had the Animation Shop that allowed you to split .avi video to frames and work with them as if they were pictures. JASC paint shop pro has been acquired by microsoft long ago, and is now being Corel Paint Shop Pro.