25/10/22- This was Sara's second after effects session, that was focusing on the animation technique rotoscoping.
This series of screen shots, will go through the process of rotoscoping in After effects to present how I have created this first rotoscoping piece.
These three images, show the creation of a new composition and where I have saved all of the assets that are featured in the animation.
This is the footage that I have inserted into After Effects, which will be used in the process of rotoscoping. The footage, consists of basic moments like walking and opening doors, so that it is easier to create the masks that create each frame of the animation.
Here I am going to interpret my footage, That I am going to rotoscope. The Interpret feature allows me to loop the footage that I am going to use.
Here is the options menu for the interpret feature. These are the settings I have chosen to use in the composition.
These are the composition settings for my Rotoscoping composition. The frame rate, preset and the dimensions are all set to the British standard for video and film. This composition is one second long but is made up from 25 frames.
Here is the footage that has been inserted into the rotoscoping composition. The time line presents each Frame that makes up this one second clip. Each frame will contain its own mask that will form to the motion of the person in the footage.
But before, I create the clipping mask ,I need to go to After effects> preferences> General to turn off "preserve constant vertex and feather point count when editing masks". Turning this off allows you to adjust each point of the mask on each Frame.
Here is the start of the masking process. The pen tool is used to draw the mask around the object you want to cut out. You can roughly draw round, then you can go back and neaten it up.
Now that the mask has been created, it can be adjusted to perfectly fit around the object. The points that make up the mask, can be manipulated and moved around to make the mask tighter to the image. The tighter the mask is on each frame, the smoother the rotoscoping will be.
This presents the options and settings for the mask that has been applied to the footage.
Here is the creation of the Main composition, where the effects will be added to the rotoscoped clip. This is to also experiment with different effects like wipes and Venetian blinds. The settings are the same as the one second composition but it is now ten seconds instead.
The textures used in the background, are stock images, sourced from the internet. The two different textures create a bold contrast between the background and the object in the foreground.
Each section of the animation utilises different textures and transitions, to experiment with the many features that are present in after effects.
Here are the settings for the rendering the video. These setting are usually the same as other projects. The video is exported as a Quicktime file and it is rendered using the Apple pro res 444 xq render engine.
This is the rough version of this film, that was created in the workshop. This video made in under two hours, so the rotoscoping isn't perfect.
I think that this video is a good begging for learning the process of rotoscoping. I think that I'll continue to develop and learn to create more advanced projects using this process.
Artist Research-
Jonas Odell-
Jonas Odell is a Swedish music video and film director. His work is a mixture of animation and film based work. He specialises in a lot of rotoscoping based videos that utilise both elements of drawings and photographs. He is also one of the cofounders of Swedish animation "FilmTecknarna". He is also a current co owner of chapel studios, which is a Stockholm based production company (wikipedia, N.D)
https://nexusstudios.com/work/take-me-out/
The images above present examples of music videos he directed for the band Franz Ferdinand. These videos use rotoscoping and cut and paste objects from different images, to create unique and almost patch work like videos.
Further Development of Rotoscoping piece-
This is further refinement of the rotoscoping film that I created in the workshop. the extra work that I did was refining the rotoscoping mask, so that the motion is smoother through out each frame. The Rotoscoping is still rough in this but I think that this process is difficult due to only recently learning in the workshop how to create a basic rotoscoping project. Personally, I think I should've chosen a slightly easier object to rotoscope rather than a person walking. If I was to take this process further, I would refine the masks on each frame, to make sure that they fit tightly against the object and focus on making the movement smoother. I'd also try and incorporate other objects and produce a longer piece.
Sources
Wikipedia. (N.D). Jonas Odell. en.wikipedia.org. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonas_Odell
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