Saturday 10 November 2007

Rotoscoparama!

It's over!
Or, at least, the sequence which has dominated the last ten days is finally done and dusted.
Following on from the last post, here are the final few seconds of the rotoscoped background scene in delightful, purty colours!

I feel that with these scenes I have reached an appropriate middle-ground by keeping the perspective work in the tracking shot reasonably impressive, with the crudity and shakiness of the rotoscoping process in keeping with the aesthetic of the rest of the film.
After all this work though, the fact of the matter is that these sequences serve as backgrounds, and as such are not the focus of each shot. In keeping with the storyboard, the Hunter's POV sees him looking through his gunsight at the Duck who's attempting to escape. The Duck animation is largely the looped flight cycle which was broken down previously, and the gunsight is a still image layer, so it took very little time to comp the entire, final sequence together once the background animation had been done.
If I say so myself - and I'd like to think it's not too cocky given the time and effort that went in - it all looks great. To the extent that I actually don't want to show it here as it will be a nice payoff visual in the context of the finished film. Instead, here are two more still images to give you an idea of the final look:


Making this film has not been (and will not ever be) an easy process. The repetition of traditional - nay, any - animation methods has given me a strange fondness for talk radio, and even seen me actively going outdoors and exercising for the welcome relief, something I never thought would happen. What has also been happening more and more of late is the feeling that comes from watching a shot that not only matches the version I had originally envisioned in my mind's eye, but at times (mostly due to the capabilities of the software I use) surpasses it. It's a strange kind of validation and it allows the speed of production to snowball as you get, to pardon the phrase, hooked on the feeling*. This sequence has been a prime example of that, and my faith in this film is getting stronger.

*If you didn't choke to death on your own vomit after reading that, I'll hopefully see you all next entry.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Awesomeness