27/10/2021
Hello everyone!
As it's fast approaching Halloween I thought now would be the perfect opportunity to share this video and a bit more about what I do🎃
This footage was filmed by myself a year ago and I used it about 6 months ago to really test my rotoscoping skills. I had just applied for a full-time position as a Roto Artist so I really wanted to challenge myself to see if it was something I wanted to commit too full time. Thankfully I was lucky enough to get the job and have enjoyed every single day since 🥺
Rotoscoping is a VFX term/skill of isolating an object in a footage, and separating it from the rest of the footage (essentially it is drawing round something (creating a roto shape) and "cutting it out" of the footage). Although it sounds fairly straightforward it is often a challenging process, particularly if the shape is moving (and even more so if it's moving rapidly and in unpredictable ways), if there is camera movement and if there is anything that obstructs the object from view at certain points in the footage. All of these things can make the object hard to track throughout the sequence which means that the roto shape that has been drawn around the object will not stay on the object. This therefore means that the shape will have to be edited and manoeuvred by hand to ensure the shape stays on the object, frame by frame (footage is typically filmed at 24 frames per second!).
Rotoscoping can be done for a number of reasons. One reason may be to separate the foreground of the footage, from the background which will then enable different effects (like colour grading, blur etc.) to be applied to different layers. It can also be used if there isn't a green screen available and the background needs completely replacing with another image. If this is the case, the foreground object needs to be rotoscoped and composited onto the background being used.
For the footage below I used a VFX software called Nuke which is mainly used for compositing aspects. The footage is about 50 frames long which I rotoscoped by hand without any tracking as the shapes were complex and moved quickly! I then composited what I had separated from the original footage onto a plain background.
To create the graphics on my page, I use rotoscope techniques but just on a picture instead of a video sequence!
I hope this post has been an interesting insight into what I do! I have been a professional Roto Artist for nearly 5 months now and I really enjoy what I do! I feel like I have really settled in now so watch this space as I'll soon be able to get more creative in my free time 👀✨
