Is there a process faster than masking frame by frame for cutting an animated character from a background? The following video is made from a number of different Anime videos, masked and composed in to a single video. I am wondering if the person who made this masked the videos frame by frame or is there a faster way in achieving this?

I am just asking for guidelines or another way of cutting the characters from a background, in an Anime which is made of a limited number colors.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPv6c3xGwzw&amp;spfreload=1

Here is an example of a replaced character in the video:
You can also checkout some of the various keying techniques. I've been able to color key things pretty well in After Effects or Nuke - for After Effects you can either use "Change to Color" to create a matte or "Linear Color Key". Either way you're going to need to split up the video into a bunch of layers - each one keying in (or out) a specific color. The end result you're going for is a black-and-white matte which you can use to cut out the footage. Often times it requires a combination of all kinds of techniques - keying some colors, luminance based keying (which can be done with "extract" in After Effects), luminance based keying on specific channels (also "extract") and a bit of hand-made roto.

If you need a more in depth explanation let me know.