Rotoscope technique
This workshop focused on rotoscoping. Rotoscoping is one of the oldest forms of animation. traditionally It involves live action images to have a light shone through them to allow the animator to draw over them , multiple images could be use so the animator can trace movement of the character or object easily. Although this was a successful early form of animation it proved to be very time consuming and was quickly replaced by easier and more advanced methods.
Personally i struggled with this workshop , i feel that this was because it was a more complex form of animation and i was used to animating using simple vectors and path techniques. The creation process involved using a piece of video that we had recorded of a movement and turning it into a rotarscope effect animation. One of the main reasons i struggled was because the video i used involved complex movement. if i was house this technique again i would use a more simple movement to allow myself to concentrate on getting the detail of the masking.
The process involved using the pen tool to create a mask on each frame of the video , once the figure was naked out i would move onto the next frame and so on for the rest of the clip. After effects generates the movement between the masks on each frame to allow the masks movement to flow smoothly between frames. Once the whole clip was masked we used different textures to get a background and a texture for the character.
Rotarscope from Ben Moulson on Vimeo.
