Applied Animation: Rotoscoping Part 1

Within my animation, I am having elements that will require me to animate some movement and in order to make it easier for myself and help me keep on track and have effective time management, I have decided that I will be rotoscoping these elements. I also feel that rotoscoping these elements will help me to create smooth flowing motions in less time than it would take if I were to do it traditionally, giving me more time to focus on back plates and creating the right aesthetic for my animation.

To get started I began with the longest section of movement I'll be doing, which is the start of the animation where Death walks through his Hall of Hourglasses. After researching how to place a video into Photoshop to rotoscope from (because I'm new to this and couldn't figure it out at all) I found the whole process to be quite simple and straight forward. However, I did forget to draw in the hand the first time round, which has made things more complicated for myself, because I am now going to have to go back and draw in the hands. I also need to fill in the head for a few of the first frames, as the head is cut off for the first second of my reference video.

Rotoscoping test one.

After completing the first cycle of the walk, I repeated the cycle in After Effects to create an entire sequence. I feel that the test worked extremely well and I am really pleased with how smoothly the cycle loops. Considering this is my first attempt at using the rotoscoping technique, I feel that I have done a good job at using the technique to my advantage and I am pleased with my own progress. 

With the test being successful, I went back into the original Photoshop file and added the elements that I had left out (because I don't think these things through), rendered all the frames and ran the test again. I managed to get the second test to run just as smooth as the first and was really pleased with my progress. However, I realised that the cycle was a tad too long for my final animation so I simply reduced the amount of times I repeated the cycle, which solved my problem. 

From here I then went back into the original file and added a mask to the flame of the torch to create a halo of light surrounding the torch and a small area of the room to give it the sense that the only light source was that torch. Overall I am really pleased with this sequence and I feel that it is my best piece of animation so far.