After Effects / Sarah Nasteruk / Process and Production 2 / Rotoscoping

Rotoscoping was the learning theme of today. We initially paired up with friends and recorded videos of us moving, creating what ever action we wanted to work with in After Effects. I walked into the room and pointed, as a bit of fun. I though this would work well to enter a scene in my video.

After we was satisfied with our footage, we exported it into After Effects and began to mask over our moving figures with the pen tool. We created a composition 1 second long and worked with 1 second of action footage we liked the most. For every frame of the 1 second footage we traced and used the time-frame key to follow a trace path until the footage tracing was complete. Once we had completed the mask we created a new composition and placed our masked 1 second moving action into it to see the effect we had just done. This was an amazing new technique that I wanted to learn, I have seen this done before and wanted to know how to do it my self. I can create a lot of cool things with this technique in the future.

Once we had our masked layer in the new composition we learnt how you can extend, shorten, loop, freeze and more with our masked footage, by using the time remapping tool. Using this tool it helped me extend the length of my footage, during my pointing action. It is fairly simple to get used to, it is like everything else in after effects and knowing how the effect works with the time-frame keys to create a programmed path.

Rotoscoping / After Effects / Practice from Charlie Hamnett on Vimeo.

For my first rotoscoped motion graphic, I wanted to create the effect of an explosion as I entered the room as a funny clip. This was inspired by 'how I met your mother' and how Barney had explosions all over his video resume. I created a movement path of two rectangles to create the impression of doors opening, to reveal me entering the room and pointing. The explosion I created with filter tools from a video sample from YouTube. This created a funny effect as if I own the place when I enter it.

Rotoscoping / After Effects (extra) from Charlie Hamnett on Vimeo.

Moving forward, I used this effect with a bit of a build up before the big reveal. I created more traced masks from my original footage. I traced my pointing hand and feet to create more scenes for my graphic, again using the pen tool frame by frame with the application of the time-frame key to create a motion path for the trace to follow. As my hand looks like it is clicking, when by itself, I created a pop effect to illustrate the indication of a click. To create this pop effect I used the pen tool to draw a line, trace path tool and applied an easy easy smooth motion to the pop. I used many patterned backgrounds to create an energetic environment to go with the up beat soundtrack I used for the graphic. Also, I created effects to these new motion mask. With my pattern images and solid layers I used the alpha matte filter to filter the colour or pattern into my traced subjects, creating an appealing display of colours in motion.


Rotoscoping / After Effects from Charlie Hamnett on Vimeo.

Finally, I have created a motion graphic without using the explosion. The explosion can look a little cheesy if I was going to show the video to people who I didn't know so well. With this in mind, I created a more graphic effect to Illustrate an impact as I enter the room. I used more easy ease motion paths with the pen tool and trace path to create energetic lines. Plus, I pulsated shapes in time to the music, using audio frames and linking the shape layers scale key to the audio and using a little code to scale the pulsations to a desired range, to create a 'boom' impression. I also added a few transitions, such as the radial scale transition and the grid transition seen in the video. This helped to communicate the heavy impact as I walk through the doors.

To conclude, I had a great time creating this video, once again learning a hell of a lot of new techniques. I enjoy after effects the more and more I get to know about it and will defiantly create more graphics like this in the future with the skills I have learnt in this process and production.

Extra Rotoscoped Work
(Skills learnt and applied To My Hyper-reality Project)

Wall Graffiti / Animated Character / Rotoscoping / Me from Charlie Hamnett on Vimeo.

Rotoscoped Funny Football Video from Charlie Hamnett on Vimeo.