Drawn by a single line - Animation Advice

Hello,
I'm struggling with an animation.

It's a crowd of characters that look like they've all been drawn from a few single strokes. My first thought was to precomp my characters, Auto-Trace the final animation, and add a stroke to the generated mask. Unfortunately, that method is missing the punch-out area, such as between his legs. It's also strobing off on some frames since Auto-Trace generates more than one mask.

Any ideas to fix my current method? Have any alternate ideas?

Really appreciate your thoughts!
rhakes
After Effects CS4


∧ Creative Mockup of the desired final look. ∧


∧ Structure of Rigged Character ∧


The look I currently have using Auto-Trace. Precomped and animated silhouette on left, resulting traced character on right. Please notice the punched out space between character's legs doesn't stroke in. ∧

Thanks for your help!

Hi Dave,
I agree with you. I must be doing it wrong.


I'm using the default settings on the Auto-Trace



Here's the settings for the Stroke effect that's applied to the Auto-Traced layer.

I've uploaded a video of the problem that is awaiting moderation.

Thanks
rhakes

Try Find Edges.

I don´t know how it will look in the end but the result on your exemple frame here worked fine.




Sometimes we overlook those good ol' effects that had been missused in the "past".


Hope I pushed you in the right direction.


Cheers.