This concept is a fusion of the kind of classical artistic "rules" like composition, and the "golden rectangle", mixed in with photography and decoupage. I explored this concept way before back in the days of Poser 2 using only static images. You make 4 or 5 images with areas that will be used as transparent parts later. Then blur each one by a decreasing degree from the background forward to the foreground. Next each one is pasted like a "peusdo layer" (NOT a real layer for Photoshop users) using paste as transparent selection over the preceding image. But this involves lots of postwork on each stage. Then while making the chromakey guide I thought what about applying a similar technique in 3d and animating it to give an effect seen in manga movies. I've not tried this yet, but I think the theory is sound enough. It should be remarkable simple. An out of focus video clip is imported as the background. Which could be the tricky bit as new camcorders are designed so an image is always in focus. On my JVC you have to go through about 4 menus to be able to manually focus. If you want to use an image on a prop, or the background, blur and soften the source image. Example: A cityscape filmed from a car. Next up is the mid-ground. Make an "alpha" plane and on this place a semi blurred image. Remember if youre making a scene where the camera is animated and tracking along with the figure to the left or right. You'll need to make the alpha plane long and may it need to extend outside. For example: a street scene. Or you may wish to make this move along with the camera. But I'm not sure how to or attach this to the camera. Parenting maybe? Finally the foreground. Stick a couple of foreground props in place and your figure walk paths, lights etc and render. You could also dispense with the mid ground and keeping a tight camera focal use this technique to create back projections. For example a video clip filmed from a train and used as the background on Poserworld carriage set.

I've done this sort of thing in my animations before. My snowball animation, for instance, combined a number of foreground and background elements, although I wasn't as concerned about focus for that piece. >> On my JVC you have to go through about 4 menus to be able to manually focus. It's a fairly simple task to blur a video clip in most video-editing utilities. If you're on the Windows platform, I can recommend freeware like VirtualDub.