Project 1: Rough rotoscope layer 1

by samscaife on Thursday, 27 October 2011

I've pretty much finished layer 1 now. It took a lot longer than I was expecting so I will have to have a proper review of what I add to it now. I still have to sort out the transition between the different dancers.

Project 1: Rotoscope base version 2

by samscaife

I decided to cut down my base so that it I would have less to animate, I'm so glad I did that now as I've saved my self hours from taking 10 seconds off of it. I tried to go throug hand balance the camera movement but this kept coming up with errors and I was anxtious to start animating so I decided to leave it to be fixed after I've drawn the whole thing.

here is the second version

Project 1: Rotoscoping update

by samscaife on Wednesday, 26 October 2011

I'm now up to 16.5 seconds whish is 10 seconds shy of my target for the day. I will have to assess how the time is going when I complete layer 1 tomorrow. this will allow me to make sure I'm adding worthwhile details and using my time for maximum benifit.

once layer one is complete I'm going to put and audio track to it and then smooth out the transitions between scenes.

Project 1: First 10 seconds

by samscaife

For the rotoscope I've mentioned that I'm going to be working by building up layers of detail so that I will have a presentable piece very quickly which can then be improved.

I'm animation at 24 frames a second so it is very time consuming work and I've just reach the 10 second boundry with my base layer which just takes the shapes of the dancers.

Here is it

Project 1: Rotoscope base

by samscaife on Monday, 24 October 2011

The plan with rotoscoping is that I have full control over the shots I want to draw over because I can take them from youtube. I've spent the day looking through videos for the types of movements that I'm after and I've build a rough base for me to rotoscope over. 

as she run to the right I am going to have her come to an aqua pax bottle and dance round the packaging. currently I want that to be in a misty form which can then fade at the end of the video.

By the time I'm done rotoscoping this base should be barely recognisable, as the final piece will have lots of exsageration on the movments making them more fluid

The video was made of of sections form the following videos

Project 1: Testing the concept

by samscaife on Thursday, 20 October 2011

I was advised to use Flash to rotoscope which is something I have not done before. I've done a quick test to see what its going to be like making the actual video. you can see the same bit of rotoscoping over white and over the original footage. I did this very quickly at 24fps choosing blue as the figure forms it created reminded me of Matisse


I'm going to have to plan how I do the rotoscope, I think I can work in a way similar to progressive enhancement and go from a basic frame upwards adding more and more layers of detail

Project 1: Crit & back to animation!

by samscaife

yesterday I had the crit for the filming that I had done for the project. Here is the piece I showed here are the comments that I received comments:

  • I should always test view my footage as the first mov I tried to show had a problem with interlacing
  • Client got bored through the video
  • the video could be cut down
  • they suggested that I film the motion not the dancer and that I have close up tight framing so that its almost abstract whats going on on screen which is what I wanted to do http://samscaifeba.blogspot.com/2011/10/project-1-shot-ideas-problems.html
  • The piece has no voice over but I expressed that the final piece would have a voice over connecting the dancing to the water
  • I put forward the connection of the years of training it takes top become a dancer and the years it takes for a water become a mineral water, this idea was well received
  • I was warned to think about how audio would work on a video designed for mobile output.
  • The client liked the subtle hinting to the product.
  • I expressed that I had several problems when I went to film the piece and the conclusion was that I should re-shoot the whole thing with a very clear message in mind.

After this crit I was confident that my idea could fit the brief but on reflection I am not sure if I will not have enough time to plan getting dancers, location and equipment in order to do this to the standerd that I would like. I am happy that I got this far with the idea as I have been able to make a dance video which I like even though I think it is off brief.

I spoke to Sue about the piece to get her thoughts on the piece and to see what her suggestions would be moving on from this. Sue advised me that I was working by trying to fit the brief to something which I wanted to do and it was not working. When talking about alternative methods to get the video to work we spoke about rotoscoping. I've now changed my idea to a full rotoscoped animation where the dancer represents water. I can steal a the visual style of the packaging and blend that into the rotoscoping so that it really stays on brand.