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.
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:
Weeks later, I’m back on this “Night of the Living Dead: Reanimated” scene. I’m jumping around a bit, so Johnny still needs lip sync. The Hinzman zombie is a junky placeholder — I’m thinking of rotoscoping him in that shot. There’s also a severe lack of Barbara there.
But… I wanted to get this test up to show what I’ve been doing with Johnny. He’s probably the most fun character to draw so far. Something about the horned-rim glasses, I guess.
All this week, while I was focused on animating a few scenes, Mike Schneider was thinking about the big picture. He was getting all the pieces in place for a relaunch of the Night of the Living Dead: Reanimated website, along with a new trailer for the project.
Behold, the latest trailer! If you watch closely, you’ll see some of my animation.