"The Beginning" Rotoscope Animation

Hi my name is Simon an here is my first project:

"The Beginnin"

I will show you how to make a low-budget animation, with only our imagination...

and of course digital design tools on our computer.

To develop this project I used several tools, both physical and digital.

The most important thing for this project is your imagination, you can literally imagine anything and turn it into something amazing.

after that we will use the following tools

A smartphone or camera. essential (that can record at least 1080p quality)

A Tripod (not necessarily professional, can be homemade) essential

A PC, Laptop, Computer. essential

Digital graphic tablet. essential (you can get some second hand and good quality at a good price)

Ebsynth. Optional. (Paint Keyframe Software.)

A mask. Optional. (I used a mask to give depth and mystery to my character)

For this short animation, I decided to create a character, who receives an incredible power from a meteorite that falls from the sky on a starry night, but after receiving it he begins to have strange behaviors.

will he be good and use his power for good?

Or will it corrupt him?

Or did this piece of alien technology simply take over his mind??

Please note that the story takes place in a post-apocalyptic future where survival is the only important thing.

That's why I decided to call it "The Beginning"

The viewer doesn't know what will come next.

and I leave it to your imagination.

For the animation rotoscoping process it is necessary to have as a base a video recorded in a real environment, (the live action if you want to call it that way), which will be used as a base to trace each image of the video sequence frame by frame in the illustration program that I will use, in this project it will be photoshop, although there are other options that you can use such as: krita or glimp.

the process is very similar but it will depend on the graphical interface of each program

When recording, there are things you should keep in mind:

that most of the time the camera should be in a fixed position.

For this, use the tripod.

Try to find a background that does not have much detail, or if you have a green cloth for the background, even better.

Record during the day even if your video has a night theme.

To start, I first had in mind the shots I would use, and the action we wanted to capture in the short. I really wanted it to be super dynamic, taking shots that took advantage of the character's movement (with and without powers).

The story I want to tell is simple and has 7 scenes, but being simple doesn't mean easy. It took me 7 days of editing in post-processing, since the animation is frame by frame (in a semi-traditional process), so keep in mind that in some cases you will have to do a frame-by-frame review.

It is also much better if someone helps you by supervising the recording. In my case, my father helped me with the recording

for the short film.

Below I will show you each original scene and its final animated version

After that I will explain how each one was post-processed.

In the first scene we see how the "mask of all powers" falls to earth, for this scene I used a fragment of a video from the web.

In the first scene we see how the mask of the powers falls to earth, to create this scene I used the fragment of a video from the web as inspiration, then first I separated the silhouette from the environment and then animated frame by frame on the glow a kind of meteorite (The Mask).

All credits to his respective owner: Teddycopart

In the second scene you can see the landing of the mask

In the third scene our character notices the event, and approaches the site to see what has happened.

The fourth scene shows us that he has decided to take it into his own hands

In the fifth scene he decides to put on the mask, as if some premonition told him to do so.

I wanted to play with the fourth wall, since it is called the "mask of all powers", it was obvious that he felt that someone was watching him, so the moment he puts on the mask he attacks the one who is filming.

After that the camera gets damaged causing a small interference.

Now the hero, or villain? is about to take flight.

So I got inspired by some action movies of how it takes flight in an iconic way.

In scene 7 the character flies towards the camera demonstrating his power.

You can compare the original and post-processed scenes to see the respective edits made.

Now I will explain step by step how to get to that result.

In most cases we will use the Ebsynth and Photoshop software

The concept of rotoscoping is basically a tracing of frames. It is a process by which a very simple (but very effective) animation is carried out based on illustrations or drawings taken and copied as is from a previously recorded video, and which serves as a basis to give movement and continuity.

History:

It was Max Fleisher, at the beginning of the 20th century, who was the first person to use the movements of a real recorded image and capture them on paper. Together with his brother Dave Fleisher (who was in charge of posing and acting in front of the camera), he created one of the characters that would mark a before and after in the world of animation: “Koko the Clown”, the first rotoscoping character and the predecessor of such famous characters as Betty Boo.

the digital graphic tablet is a computer input device that enables a user to hand draw or paint images, animations and graphics, with a special pen-like stylus, similar to the way a person draws pictures with a pencil and paper by hand.

In this project, the use of this tool will be essential since the animation will be drawn/corrected frame by frame on the final video composition.

We will use it to draw the selected style on our short.

We all know or have an idea of ​​how Photoshop works but what is Ebsynth?

EbSynth is a beta software that allows filmmakers to add custom, unique and cool aesthetics to their projects efficiently, enhancing visual content and streamlining the production process*.

*(In some cases)

Ebsynth works as a kind of filter over the film image, but how does it work?

Think of an image style that will be applied over the video, but we'll see how it works that later.

Nowadays, a similar result can be achieved with artificial intelligence, even faster, and although Ebsynth is also a computer application that facilitates and speeds up the rotoscoping process, the direct use of AI removes a bit of the organic process of retouching and learning how frame-by-frame animation works.

Download Ebsynth on its official site.

After recording our scenes and selecting the final ones, you will have to precompose them. For this, I will use Adobe Premiere, but you can use any video composition software of your choice.

To compose your scenes, drag your files into your favorite video editing program, and organize them according to the script you created.

After composing the video, you will need to export it. In order to work on it in the rotoscoping style, you need to export it in jpg, which will create a folder where each frame will be an image in jpg format,

so in the file tab select export and then media.

What I recommend is to export each scene separately since it will be easier to work in Ebsynth or, if it is the case, in the traditional animation form.

After composing your video, you will need to export it. In order to work on it in the rotoscoping style, you need to export it in jpg, which will create a folder where each frame will be an image in jpg format,

so in the file tab select export and then media

Open the image sequence in photoshop, there a timeline will be created, in which you must choose the speed of the frames FPS

The FPS are, basically, the number of images joined together that are needed to create a second of video. The number of images that fit in a second will be the number of frames per second that a video has. Check the animation video indicating how to adjust the fps, although my program is in Spanish it is quite intuitive

Normally 24 frames per second are used for hand-illustrated animation, but in my case I will use 12 to speed up the process

For some scenes I used filters from the Photoshop filters and effects gallery to speed up the work, I mostly use them in the backgrounds or in static scenes, in scene number one I used a filter from the sketch gallery called stamp to separate the sky from the buildings.

So I can edit the background separately and make a glow effect using a dark layer and lowering its opacity with a keyframe. A keyframe marks the point in time at which a value is specified for a layer property such as position in space, opacity, or audio volume.

in this case controlling the opacity from 0 to 100 on the dark sky.

Now in the composition select a frame where our object or main character is clear, in this case

the meteorite where the mask is supposed to come from.

Keep in mind the frame number and when saving your illustrated frame, make sure to keep the same number of the respective frame.

select the best frame of the original clip, the most detailed and clean frame to illustrate, this will be our keyframe, keep on mind Ebsynth will use this keyframe as a default style for the other frames, then illustrate it and add the desired details and style, and then save it as a jpg in high quality.

When you are going to save the frame illustration, locate the respective original frame, and give it the same number name, to distinguish it, put an extra name like in my case "illustrated"

The style I will work with will be outlines, as it gives me more freedom to modify details such as shadows and backgrounds. It is also easier for post-production editing for the final product.

For long scenes you will need to illustrate more than one keyframe, so try to locate in the scene where the exponentially sharpest changes occur and make an illustration of those frames.

Now we will open ebsynth, its interface is very simple but efficient.

The most important thing is to keep in mind the following boxes: keyframes and video.

In the keyframe box, always drag the illustrated keyframes with the style applied.

And in the video box, drag the sequence image folder from our original video.

*The other boxes like mask and advanced options will not be covered in this instructable, but as its name indicates it generates a mask to separate the character from the pre-recorded background.

Now select the illustrated frame, or the one with a style applied, and drag it to the Keyframe box

Then drag the original frame from its respective folder to the Video box.

You can select them from the browser or drag them to the indicated box.

Now click on sync to start the program, based on the original frame, the illustrated frame will modify the rest of the frames, in this case from 37 backwards and forwards. This is where the complexity begins, because if the video has a lot of detail, in some cases the initial image will be deformed, so we will have to draw, edit frame by frame and retrace.

The program will create an output folder, where the new frames based on the illustrated image will be created.

With the result of the ebsynth images, go back to Photoshop. There a new pre-composition will be made, in this case the final scene. Make the respective adjustments. In this case, the details are very few since the scene has almost no details.

create a folder and export it in jpg as a photoshop jpg image sequence high quality

To edit the resulting images from ebsynth, import them into Photoshop, select the folder where they are located and clicking on the first image (000) and checking the image sequence box will open it, which will generate a consolidated video on a timeline, remember to select the specific frame rate for your project. As I indicated in this project, I am working with a time base of 12 frames per second.

The resulting timeline will allow you to move frame by frame and draw on it, but first you will have to create a new video layer with the original recordings which will go below the illustration layer.

What I recommend, as I said at the beginning, is to work on each scene separately. Each scene means the creation of hundreds, even thousands of jpg files since the sequences are generated which can sometimes exceed 100 frames. That is why it is better to start a scene and finish it, to avoid confusion.

Ebsynth is not completely perfect, if you prefer to do the animation frame by frame you will not need Ebsynth, but by using it you will speed up the animation process by 40%, although in styles with more detail it generates more errors, and when editing in post production it will be a complete mess.

Here is an example of how even making 3 different frames, the results of Ebsynth are not as expected.

Use free video resources that you will find on the web in my case I used this offline video transition that I found on youtube

Clip credits Alesjo llazari

For the scene backgrounds, I searched on Google for post-apocalyptic images of an abandoned world. Although I was able to use the locations from the original videos I filmed, in some cases I decided to change the backgrounds for more realism, and in the flight to the sky I used the background of a bird's eye view of the city.

Image credits to all respective owners.

If you want to work with the backgrounds of the environment in which you recorded the original videos, you can give it your own style. In my case, I added a Photoshop filter to make it look illustrated.

It all depends on the scene and the result you want to project in it, I tried as much as possible to make them look like hero flight powers

To finish the scenes, a final revision must be made, where small details that Ebsynth cannot recognize are retouched, as you could see in the previous step.

So in this step you should go frame by frame editing errors and anomalies that may exist in the results.

This process is arduous and the time it will take you to edit depends on the complexity of your scenes, in my case and in this short it will take me more than 7 days.

In addition, we will have to give the character a color base to separate it from the background. In this example you can see how I create a video layer that will be between the illustrated edges and the background to give volume to the character.

You can play with some effects to give more realism to the animation

(like in scene 7 where the character flies over the city.)

In this case, I reflected the character to give realism to the water on the floor.

The idea of ​​this project is to be a low-budget animation, but if you can get a green backdrop the resulting animated sequences in ebsynth will be easier to achieve.

But in case you can't access a green background I recommend you go to this page:

https://www.iloveimg.com/remove-background

where you can remove the background from your image sequences, leaving only the subject, which is an important help.

I've always wanted to make an animation since I was a kid when I played with flipbooks, and with this project I realized that animation is an art that takes a lot of time due to the hard work and detail that it involve.

I had a lot of fun doing this project, and I really would like to add more scenes to see where the story of this character ends. I would also like to add sound, but I'll leave that for another Instructable.

Thanks for your time.