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VaporTrailx1 · #1

I'm working on a short film, and I thought it would be interesting to rotoscope parts of the movie with photoshop or something. Is there a special program for this available or what?

Fathom Zero · #2

Simply draw over every frame. If you want to do it right.

Phoenix Gamma · #3

Depends on how you want to do it. The way I was taught was to use a program like Quicktime Pro that can break a movie into individual picture files (I believe it's File>Export>Image Sequence or something like that), open the files in Photoshop or whatever you use for digital imaging/illustrating, and paint whatever you're doing. Then put all of the images back together in Quicktime and call it a day (if I recall correctly, it's Import>Image Sequence, then you select the first frame of the video. From there you need to tweak the frames per second, video quality, etc.)

You could use other programs, like Flash or perhaps AfterEffects (both of which would involve importing the video and drawing over it on a new layer. I never played with AfterEffects enough, but I'm pretty sure it has some vector tools you can work with), but no matter how you do it, you're going to be drawing over each individual frame.

That's just the general explanation, though. So no, there's no program E-Z Rotoscoping Program out there.

It's tedious as hell

Mockery · #4

I hope you're not doing a commercial for Charles Schwab.

Fathom Zero · #5

Uck, Charles Schwab What the Hell was the point to that? I finally saw A Scanner Darkly and they did rotoscoping proper. Modern rotoscoping, at any rate.

VaporTrailx1 · #6

I was planning on doing some digital filtering with some rotoscoping added in. My avatar is sort of an early mock-up of the character of Death in my film.

spoiler : He uses a Rubik's cube to capture souls.

I have a script written, but no decent camera equipment or a cast as of yet. Strangely, I have friends' bands who'll submit tracks, but no one who's down to act.

That and I'm still stuck on Photoshop 7.0. so i have to upgrade. My plan to use rotoscoping and digital editing is to overcome the shortcoming of bad camera equipment with amateur camera work. For some reason I just think a poorly drawn low-budget cartoon would be more successful than a poorly filmed low-budget college film. Plus cartooning leaves more room for creative freedom.

Fathom Zero · #7

I can dig that, but the fact remains that you'll need a program that outputs entire frames by the thousand. I think VLC has a similar function, but I can't remember off-hand.

Good luck. If you ever finish it, I'd look forward to seeing it.

VaporTrailx1 · #8

I've actually never seen A Scanner Darkly. I wanna check it out. I was mostly inspired by Ralph Bakshi's works like Wizards.

Fathom Zero · #9

You'll see the differences in technologies. In Bakshi's heyday, you'd have to draw the cels, pretty much. Now, the computers allow a certain smoothness.

Regardless, they're all very cool.