Firsts! - Rotoscoping

 Firsts! - Rotoscoping

Introduction

The first new medium I'm going to look at in my 'Firsts!' series is rotoscoping, one of the very first forms that animation took in the early 1900's. Rotoscoping is a technique that, while originally was defined as tracing over live action footage to produce realistic animations and movement, can now mean so much more in the modern day.

 

Rather than rotoscoping being used to simply create realistic animations through tracing, rotoscoping has been used in various ways throughout history to add effects and animations to live action film, television, and web based media.

One of the most memorable and culturally impactful uses of rotoscoping was in the 1988 film 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit' starring Bob Hoskins. This film incorporates rotoscoping by using live action actors who interact with 2D frame by frame cartoon characters which have been drawn in after their solo performances.

Two highly expressive and charming stills from 1984's Who Framed Roger Rabbit!

This obviously creates a significant challenge for the actors who have to interact with nothing, but the results can be incredibly appealing and charming when done correctly, which this film absolutely does.

As someone who's never been particularly interested in traditional media when it comes to my love of animation, my knowledge of rotoscoping and what it entailed (drawing directly onto pieces of film in an extremely precise and manual way) filled me with dread, trying to avoid ever having to do it myself.

However, I only recently learned of a Photoshop feature that allows users to draw directly onto video files, frame by frame, using the whole Photoshop suite of tools, with the chance to use the most important buttons of all, CTRL and Z.

I was immediately far more interested in the prospect of trying this medium now, since the concept of having real people interacting with cartoon characters or effects has always been something that's warmed my heart, I never had the facilities or means to do it.

Making My Clip

Now I had those means, I had to choose the footage I was gonna mess up. Rotoscoping by it's nature is incredibly time consuming, requiring that you draw on every single frame of your chosen footage. Even a small clip of 5 seconds works out at 125 individual frames to draw over if the playback is at 25fps, so the footage I chose was very short to keep this in mind.

I used a small 5 second clip from a 1984 breakdancing film named 'Breakin', in which the protagonist 'Turbo' dances along an empty street with a broom for 5 seconds. The scene had just the right staging and dynamic movement from Turbo himself to make a good stage for any added effects.

I was also sure that the clip I selected had solid neutral starting and ending poses/frames:

The process of drawing directly onto footage in photoshop is extremely simple, you can import MP4's into the program as a film layer, and as long as the 'altered video' checkbox is ticked, you can draw/use any tool directly onto the film layer, moving from frame to frame using the playhead:

From here the task was pretty open and simple, using the brush tool to add new effects to the scene to enhance it. The goal of this clip was to use a style of animation that you'd see in classic 80's and 90's uses of animation in music videos, but to also be tonal to what is happening in the scene. 

Using animation, we can turn this scene from a regular breakdancing scene, to show that Turbo is actively colouring and enriching his environment with his dance moves. To keep it brief, I focused on 3 key elements in the scene, the broom, Turbo's feet, and the boom box we can see on the right of the frame:

In this clip, the backing track is coming from the Boom Box, but that's not really shown in the clip itself. By adding some simple animated sound lines to it, we can see that is what is making the noise.

The Broom is the focal point of the scene, and is what the entire dance section is based around. I wanted to light it up and make it a staff or beacon or something, to show that while it's still just a broom, it's something more when Turbo is using it to dance with.

While the broom is the focal point of Turbo's dance, the moonwalking and sliding of his feet seemed too good not to play with when it comes to animation. I added these blobs that are animated to show that Turbo's feet and moves are directly impacting the environment, causing colour to kick up from the pavement and then fizzle out with every slide and stomp.

The final 5 second animation looks like this, with 125 frames:

Final Thoughts

I'm so happy I chose to do Rotoscoping as my 'first First' because it was a total blast! I was assuming the work would be tedious but the frame by frame nature of the animation combined with the simple/messy style I was using made the whole thing really theraputic to do.

After completing this clip, I was itching to find more footage to mess around with, as well as having the ability to record my own footage to see if I can create some rotoscoped character interactions!

I'm excited by the possibilities of this medium and I reckon I'm gonna have so much fun with it when the right inspiration strikes :D