Rotoscoping is a type of animation that is done by using real life footage and drawing over each frame to create a moving image. Because of this, it's one of the most accurate animation methods out there.
I created my own rotoscope animation, going with the idea that it had to involve movement. I decided to go with a ballet dancer, as the movement is hard to animate and it's very fast-pace and complicated.
The first thing I did was select a video from YouTube and download an mp4 version. I chose something from the Nutcracker, as the dances from that ballet are well known. I then created a black background layer so that I could draw the dancer with white. I wanted to draw in white because it would be easier to make everything stand out while using the video layer.
Because the video file was low resolution, the brush size and settings I chose are quite pixelated. However, I don't think this is too much of an issue, as it moves so fast that it looks pixelated anyway.
Then I set to work. I started drawing keyframes every ten frames, intending to have a good ten seconds of animation. I later decided to cut it down to six seconds, which is still long enough to show the movement of the dancer. Unfortunately, I miss counted one of the keyframes, which meant I had to fill in every single frame. I was originally against this idea, as I thought it would take too long, but after watching the animation through I realised it wouldn't flow right if I skipped any frames. So, I started filling in all the other frames. This daunted me as a lot of work, but because I stripped the dancer of any details, I could complete up to fifteen frames in an hour. Given that the final frame count was 148 frames and I did about ten more than that with keyframes, I think I finished this in good time.
Because it was easy and fast to animate a lot of frames, I finished within roughly ten hours of working. This, of course, was stretched out across and few weeks, but I'm still proud of the amount of time it took. After it was finished I struggled with creating a gif. Because all the frames were separate layers, when I converted it into a gif it all got overlapped and wouldn't move at all. I managed to figure out a way. I deleted all the frames that were not going to be in the animation, then copied it over to a new photoshop project.
Then all I had to do was add everything to the timeline, and check it played correctly. I tried changing the amount of time the layers would play for to try and create a gif, but some frames disappeared entirely when I did this, so I had to undo it all. Once everything was back the way it had been, I found out how to change when the video ended, then converted it to mp4.
This is the finished animation. I'm very proud about how it turned out, and I found this form of animation easier than the others. I find 2D animation easier in general, and enjoy it more. This may have something to do with line-work as it's more defined to me than 3D animation, which can sometimes be overwhelming.
I could've done better on this project when planning. I wasted a lot of time at the beginning of this project planning instead of lining the frames, and ended up wasting time on frames that weren't going to be in the final animation anyway. Furthermore, some frames are inconsistent with each other. For example, later on in the animation, the underneath of the skirt is showing, yet in the previous frame it hasn't been drawn. This was a mistake I most likely made because a session where I had been working on this had ended and I picked it up a few days later, where I forgot to add the final line. But it isn't noticeable, as the animation is smooth and fast.
This was the original video I used for the rotoscope. Between 27 and 33 seconds is what I have animated. This was uploaded by Royal Opera House on YouTube in December of 2017.
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