Rotoscoping - Reteroscerpering

The animators have been busy working on the post production of Bones of Essimer. It has been edited down into a trailer because there was heaps of CG to composite into the whole cinematic. We have been compositing all the CG elements into each shot which involves keying the green screen out, camera tracking, sky replacements, compositing 3D buildings and background scenery into each shot, lighting the CG to match the live action footage, putting in atmospherics like dust and smoke and rotoscoping. Each animator was given a specific job to get done on each shot, so we worked like a chain and the piece of compositing software that we have been using is NukeX 8.0.

I was given the job of rotoscoping. Rotoscoping is when you use the rotoscoping tool to make a mat to take stuff out that does not need to be in the scene or that needs to be moved in the scene. After you have put your mat around the object, you have to go through the shot frame by frame to move the roto mat if need be. I rotoscoped nearly every shot and fixed the rotscoping in the two shots that somebody else did. I also removed all of the tracking markers in the shots that had tracking markers in them using the rotoscope tool. Rotoscoping is not difficvult but is a very time consuming job.

Screenshot of one of the Bones of Essimer shots.

I have also been working on the concept art book for Bones of Essimer. However, it has been put on hold for the last couple of weeks, while I have been working on my personal project. I will be getting back to working on this next week. The cover page and the first few pages are complete and look really slick. I can not wait to finish this and share the finished product with everyone!

Bones of Essimer has been a really interesting experience and this project made me realise that I want a career as a Producer. I intend on going back to SIT next year to study the Graduate Diploma of Film to upskill and gain experience on the film side. This also means that I will be participating in the collaborative film and animation project again next year. I look forward to working with a different group of people with new ideas and challenges.