Miguel Valenzuela writes in with his technique for making toys appear to animate on their own:

I created a green screen glove out of some fabric and used it to animate a LEGO robot across a table. The green glove was made with green spandex and stitched together with only the thumb. It should really be called a ‘green mitten’ since it has no fingers.

I shot the video of the LEGO moving around and then moved it out of the frame. I then let the camera shoot about 20 seconds of background.

I imported the video into Adobe Premier and cut it into two segments: the glove shot and the background shot, and layered the glove shot over the background shot. I then keyed out the glove as much as possible and let in the background which matched seamlessly with the foreground.

On my second try I’d use a different material than spandex because it reflects a lot of light and creates hotspots which are hard to key out. I’d also crop out a significant portion of the hand and only key in the edges close to the LEGO.

Thanks for sharing your project with us, Miguel! Looks like an awesome technique to try. Check out his video: