1. Using pen-tools, and trace the outline of live-action footage, then coloring them frame by frame.
2. Using the paint tools (Cut-out technique), Bezier pen tool in Flash. Easing in & out, keyframe animations.
3. Apply Filter: ToonIt! rototoon filter, adjust the thickness of the edge and then blur the back scene.
4. Shooting key-in footage in green screen, giving edges, changing the tone, composite into another pre-made background.
5. Pixel motion: Tracing 6 frame in a second and get texture in Toon Boom animate, applying motion blend in after effect (6 keyframe up to 12 keyframes per second), this will lead to a very dream like, transformed figure.
6. Illustrator’s live trace: batch the process using Adobe bridge.

prototype 2 | export into image sequence, live trace by illustrator.

prototype 3 |  live trace the real photo, composite still image in after effect to create movement.

Why rotoscope?

From“Koko the clown” in early 1920′s to the animation feature film “waking life” in 2001, animations world had changed many reason to rotoscopr live footage.

That is what audience always do, search their compassion from the animated characters’ figures and movements.

The Fleischer studio

The rotoscope

In my rotoscope research, i want to find the fine way to do it without too much hand-rotoscope. Many films had worked with labs to develop their own script and rendering systems to finish the tracing, coloring part, but they were still using human forces on doing them frame by frame. Machines wouldn’t identify those retouching and finishing parts. Only humans knowlegde and sense the difference between a well done rotoscope and the one that’s not.

Since the rotoscope is coming from the out-line of figure, and the movements are simply traced for each frame. I would start research the silhouette using in film and animation, and then see how possible it can be munipulated in 3D space in after effect to achieve more humanity and the spirit on the character’s faces.

The beginning of rotoscope is just a simply silhouette.

For silhouette:

1. The Shadows is what it for
2. The details to explain things that’s happening
3. Links to other objects that near the character for giving meanings and relative to each other
   

Alfred Hitchcock

He has made many inventions in the visual world. The way he directed and wrote the stories were amazingly done and later changed for visual shooting purposes. I take  his way of using silhouette in cinematography as an example here.

Psycho/ The shower scene

The knife and the woman

Nearly the whole film was shot with 50 mm lenses on 35 mm cameras. This trick closely mimicked normal human vision, which helped to further involve the audience

The Hitchcock presents TV series /

[I would address few of things on how ALfred Hichcock experienced the 3D cinematography in his film here.]

Silhouette Means

The effects are all trying to arouse your emotions (In Hitchcock’s films, it’s fear and curiousness) by how the silhouettes are composing and bringing relative meanings. What Colors(here is black because shadows should be black), and how many details disclosed decide everything here,

Wizards (1977)/ Ralph Bakshi

This is the well-known animation that had many rotoscopes on live-action footage. The director Ralph Bakshi also made other his works in the same way.This animation mix the solid rotoscoping man figures, and real-time footage with animated characters in a 2D animation film.

The very interesting part is, he turned to Rotoscope because he was rejected by 20th Century Fox for asking more budgets on the battle sequences.

Lord of the ring (1978)

2D animation

Firing Rang

It made 2D character have a sense of moving in 3D .

In waking life, over 30 animators doing the hand-drawing rotoscope job for 18 months just to get it right.  In Waltz with Bashir, audience can sense the easing in and out movement but rotoscope looks of every shadow and lighting part. It isn’t real-time rotoscoping, at least not frame by frame rotoscope, but more like computer generalizing, motion blend between every 5 frames.  

3D animation using silhouette

Silhouettes of Jazz

This piece is  a very interesting metaphor of how The Jazz music(light) caused human’s culture(projection).

A silhouette (shape of human’s entertained culture ) that cost by the light (jazz music) passes through the unknown materials in different room.

Dominik Kaser
Martin-Sebastian Senn, Mario Deuss
ETH Zurich

(Siggraph 2009, switzerland)

This will be an experimental short animation with real interview soundtrack about the weather and people’s thoughts on how they effected by it.

Content/
I want to make an animated short film, document people’s feelings about their lives and philosophy to how the weather effects their lives in few sentences. (New Orleans, Asian area and Taiwan especially)

Form/
Collage of intervew videos with Rotoscope on it (because of more creative visual effect and using low resolution camera can be done quickly and low budget)
, motion graphics (still images but animated by aftereffect to create the feeling of “this moment”). And real interview soundtrack behind the film.

About Rotoscope/

/ Year /                  / Precedents  /                  / Rotoscope Technique /
2001                        Waking life hand tracing rotoscoping frame by frame
2006                        A scanner darkly hand tracing rotoscoping frame by frame
2006                        Renaissance motion capture and computer graphics
2007                        Persepolis traditional animation , frame by frame
“Je suis bien content” and “Pumpkin 3D”
2008                       Fears of the dark
2009   (4 years)    Waltz with Bashir Flash cutouts 3D, and classical animation

Prototype/

The first thing i tried , is to masking the video in after effect (transforming the mask path).

The jumps are very annoying as you can see.

So I tried another way, to output the video into sequences and fix it with photoshop one by one.

And I got this:

It doesn’t look very bad, then I run it automatically on the whole sequence.

But I got a video like this:

Which has too many noises…

I decided to test on other part of my project, tried to make the still images move in few seconds.

This is an old exhibition in 2007, MOMA.

I found it very humor the way he presents his show. His simple comics drawing looked like spontaneously coming from his pen.

He said: those humor came from the media or topics he read, he sees public media as one of his biggest cultural references and resources in his work.

More of his work

Interactive :

Even the thing like misspelling been corrected by audience made this artist receive his feedback from the viewers right away . The open form of this piece  was really relied on everyone who was there participating this whole show (drawing and showing people immediately).

LocoRoco is a cute game for PS3, played with balance by the controller and leading those colorful, fatty balls to the destination. SInce it include balance in the game, how this game shows gravity becomes the key in background design.  

This is the game easily to enjoy and have fun with. Player needs only few knowledge about 2 character: Butterfly (player) goes waking up the little fruit balls and use the magic glowing to attract them to follow to the destination.

The background is in very simple shape. It’s purely a 2D game. Amazingly the texture of the water and the mechanics such as the action of jumping, floating, re-bouncing and rolling are the great parts of this cute game. Not to mention the colorful character and cute little faces on each of the fruit ball or the guards, they made this game with very friendly and human touch, which is definitely a success.

To be honest, there is a basic problem of the game:

The background is white. For this kind of game without time and deadline, you just keep playing until you get to the goal. People like me may take 2 hours to just finish one level, and white background really hurts my eyes…

This is Lily Huang’s blog for 2010 Thesis studio, with weekly update, I can review all my progress of my thesis research next year.

For the last semester, I was developing the story of my owned country : Taiwan. It became a bigger project than I thought as a2 minutes animation short, and turns into a series of animation with allegory contents: A metaphor about being a Taiwanese and his/her trouble encounter to survive and keep the sustainability of the island, and then the self-identity to his/her island. 

So, This final animation becomes the first episode of my whole story about Iceman and his iceberg. For more details and feedback, you can check more work and working process from here

What I am into now | Game design

I found an independent game named: Blueberries garden by Erik Svedang. before the end of semester. And it was so inspiring that I am now looking forward to play the game and get to know how the world he tries to make.

check more about this game

I checked up more different games after that, and tried to look into their ideas of their world, is anything similar to what i want to put into my story world? how to achieve both playful and subject matter ways. 

If I am a game designer? | Different way to look into my story

So far, my resources are books, articles, blogs, and of course more games to play with. Doesn’t matter if it’s Flash game, or with platform like your computer, Play station or X-box. I believe I can find good examples to have a basic outline of my game.  Seems last year I spent a lot of effort to constsruct a story about Iceman and his Iceberg. Maybe right now, I would like to see my story in different way.

More examples of the game I played:  The path.