After looking through my blog archives, it turns out I never posted here about the H.P.Lovecraft Literary Podcast. (It must have slipped my mind when I was posting over at Unfilmable.com back in December.)
Listening to the podcast is like reading Lovecraft with sarcastic (yet intelligent) footnotes. What turned me on to it was episode 22, which covers “The Other Gods.” Hosts Chris Lackey and Chad Fifer dig deep into Dreamlands lore to review the story… and the short film I released through Subterranea Entertainment.
They’ve got a great understanding of Lovecraft’s work, and I was thrilled to hear their thoughts regarding the animated film.
So crawl over to hppodcraft.com to listen online. Or get obsessive like me and download every episode and listen on your iPod!
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.
It was a marathon session tonight. Just me and my Ustream channel and a few friendly observers.
Lo and behold, I’ve finished the scene. The leering, lurching Bill Hinzman zombie attacks Barbara, she screams, and Johnny leaps to the rescue. It’s only 14 seconds, but I think I put in more hours on this section than the last one, if possible.
All in all, my method is pretty… methodical. George Romero is a director who uses a lot of cuts and handheld work, which means time intensive roto.
Enjoy the scene below. I’m sending it off to director Mike Schneider and going to bed.
Same section as last time, but now Johnny has lip sync, the zombie is properly rotoscoped, and so is Barbara.
Roto is tedious. I’m doing sketchy work, but every 2 frames. That’s 15 times a second. Per character. Now my wrist hurts.
To prove it, I actually recorded my work habits with a webcam today. See my Ustream channel for two hours of NOTLD:R Roto work.
Really, it’s boring. Don’t bother.
But, you can enjoy the animated result below:
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