YesWheely

I've noticed that my most popular post was the one about sit-skiing but rather unannounced I had added a short animation featuring some rotoscoping I had done. So I don't know what's more interesting: the thought of me being dragged up a nylon slope face first or the animation.

Today I took off the animation and I'm going to write this entire feature that you have already started reading.

Rotoscoping

Firstly I'll show the animation then I'll explain the creative choices I made, the equipment I used, the sleepless nights, the technique, and some...
It boils. Boiling is a stylistic treatment. It simply means the lines jump around. It may seem like it's a rougher, quicker, and easier way of doing it. But it's not really because every line you want to boil needs to be re-drawn on every frame. To animate without boiling means you only need to draw the new bit.
Frames. To me frames are like something that doesn't need explaining. It's like oneness. A frame is an image. Motion pictures, tv, animation, games, etc all rely on the same premise. It's how the eye works. Further reading.
Line Drawing. This stylistic choice was made for two reasons 1. So I could meet deadlines. 2. Because drawing all the details would have made the animation quite cluttered.
Equipment. I was at uni at the time so I borrowed a camera and tripod to record the motion. Then I had a pen tablet attached to a pc which I did the drawing on. I used professionalI(student license) software back then but if I did it now I would use: Pencil (http://www.pencil-animation.org), avidemux (http://www.avidemux.org)
Planning. First you have to have storyboards or something so you can direct the motion capture part of the process. For me I like storyboards. I abhor stickman storyboards but I guess they do the same thing.
Filming. The first thing you'll do, well after the other first thing above, is to film the scenes to capture the motion. It doesn't matter if you shout cues while recording to micromanage people because you aren't even recording sound. You're the only one with the times, the storyboard, and the vision.
Drawing. Ok so all that now needs to be done is the time consuming and labor intensive task of drawing the frames. I hardly slept for 4 days fuelled by quadruple espressos and red bull.
Simply you take the video file, over each frame you draw the motion and then you remove the video from the view. I added a different background on a new layer that progressively drew afterwards. (That's right it wasn't filmed on location.)

I've started to write down another set of sequences for a rotoscoping idea I have as it is basically motion capture in 2D.