We all like going behind the scenes, right?
When Mike Schneider, director of the Night of the Living Dead: Reanimated project, asked me to contribute a featurette to the upcoming DVD release, I was afraid I wouldn’t have the time to do so. Well, last week I gathered strength and put together a 6 minute tutorial on interpretive rotoscoping.
Rotoscoping is an animation process that involves a lot of tracing. For NOTLD:R, I changed my style up depending on the shot — and sometimes that meant tracing 15 pictures a second with my Wacom stylus.
In this video, you can see some of that process, albeit sped up to make it more interesting.
Interpretive Rotoscoping for NOTLD:R from Mike Boas on Vimeo.
Meanwhile, in Rochester, two of my films will be playing as part of The Little Theatre’s 25 Hour Horror Feast. The event starts Halloween Eve with a zombie walk, followed by a marathon of horror movies that continues through Halloween. A special horror-themed edition of Rochester’s Emerging Filmmakers Series will play that Saturday afternoon at 1:00 pm.
Kicking off the EFS is the premiere of Skeletal Remains, which acts as both a tribute to classic horror movies and as a music video for 1970s rock group Aviary. (It was Matt Guarnere, a friend of Aviary’s Brad Love, who first suggested I try such a film.)
Someday I’d like to work some animation into Skeletal Remains, but I’ve had friends tell me the current live action cut plays pretty well. My approach was to borrow (steal) scenes from public domain movies like The House on Haunted Hill, The Last Man on Earth, and The Screaming Skull, then remix them to depict a fun little horror story. Now I get to brag that my film stars Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Glenn Strange, and Vincent Price!
Later on in the show is Mike Russo’s Virgin Fang, which starred me(!) as Draculess, king nerd of vampires. Mike threw this at me back in August, when many of us Rochester Movie Makers were in the midst of multiple other summer short projects. He invited me to play the lead in this silent horror-comedy, and I was too flattered to refuse.
It was a challenge for me to “act,” even if it was only hamming it up pantomime style. I helped Mike by knocking out some storyboards, then editing the piece in Final Cut Pro at Animatus.
Virgin Fang also stars the beautiful Becky Herber, with camera duties performed by RMM head honcho Stan Main.
Come out October 31st to The Little, 240 East Avenue, Rochester! For a complete run-down of the event, click here.
Now that I’ve completed three scenes for the Night of the Living Dead: Reanimated project, I thought it might be cool to show my cartoon shots next to the original movie footage. You’ll see where I applied faithful rotoscoping and where I deviated from the original acting.
The following video clips show the animation, then side by side comparisons with the original live action scenes.
NOTLD:R Don’t worry from Mike Boas on Vimeo.
NOTLD:R Here he comes now from Mike Boas on Vimeo.
NOTLD:R Down in the basement from Mike Boas on Vimeo.
I nearly blew it on this one. After what I THOUGHT was the final render, I noticed I had animated everything at double speed. So 13 seconds of footage was zipping by in 6 seconds.
So… I went back to the keyframes and had to double the space between them. And then add in some more animation so things didn’t look… so… deliberate…
Overall, a cute little scene. No zombie attacks, but it gets across a plot point — that Judy is now watching the sick girl in the basement.
Here’s a continuation of my latest scene. Helen Cooper turns around and leaves the basement. Next, I’ll add the Judy character, who takes her place watching the sick child.
Once I’m satisfied with the movements, I’ll go back in and add the grayscale coloration to the characters. Traditionally, I do that before the animation, but I’m changing things up a little.
Some of my new drawings for Helen’s back and Judy:
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