Night of the Living Dead: Reanimated has been nominated for a Rondo Award! Lovers of animation and horror alike can vote for NOTLD:R as Best Independent Production of 2009.

The Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Awards are highly revered in the independent horror community. The voting is open to anyone! I highly encourage you to vote, not only for Night of the Living Dead: Reanimated but for the horror sites, blogs, hosts, movies, and magazines you love.

Visit www.rondoaward.com to find out more.

EDITED TO ADD (03/08/10 )

Maybe you’d like to watch the film before voting?

Night of the Living Dead: Reanimated will continue to be hosted by Count Victor Von Scary and the gang at ‘Friday Night – Fright Night’ until this Friday, March 12th at
http://www.fridaynight-frightnight.com

So if you haven’t seen it yet, this is the last week.

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.

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: