During this workshop I learnt all about rotoscoping in after effects.
What is rotoscoping?
Rotoscoping enables the creator to take a video clip and isolate one area of it, usual a figure/ person. This process involves a tracing effect where you frame by frame tracing around the figure frame by frame. This technique is a way of tuning live footage into an animation.
For this workshop I needed to bring with me a clip on a person moving, whether it be walking running or jumping. I choose to do mine with someone doing a little dance.
To start I opened up after effects, created a new composition set up at the usually way (1080x1920, with the frame rate at 25fps) but the time was set to 2 seconds. I then imported the footage and moved it in composition. I then started to tracing round the figure using the pen tool to create a mask layer, the pen tool is similar but different to the one in illustrator, of which I am very competent using, the one in After Effects is not as malleable as that one. Once path is complete it will automatically remove the background and leave the traced out figure. The you move on to the next frame (cmd left or right arrow key) and change the outline to fit the movement of the figure, this automatically create a new key frame. Once this was completed for each frame, I created a new composition that I would then import the the footage into. The last stage for the figure was to create a silhouette I did this by going to layer -new- solid, I chose a bright colour so it would stand out again the background I would then add in. So the next sage was to add in a background, I chose to create one with a contrasting colour to the figures bright blue.
This was definitely not my favourite technique in creating an animation but I do like the idea behind it. This piece of work is not my strongest and that is easy shown.
