Blog #7: Rotoscoping

Here we are once more, this time talking about using Rotoscoping to analyze a 3-5 second animation. This process is… exhausting. Not only are you tracing up to 120 frames, but you have to then make sure your lines are close enough to color the thing. But other than that, the process helped me see how subtle the movements can be in a slower scene. In the scene I used, from Treasure Planet, John Silver is reunited with Morph and uses a lot of facial expressions during this short moment. John Silver is usually drawn on twos, but there are moments where he is drawn on threes and even ones. Morph meanwhile, is the opposite, usually on twos but mostly on ones. This gives Morph a more energetic feel to John Silver’s slower, lumbering movements.

As seen above, the movements are very smooth, but just watching it, I would have never guessed that John Silver is immobile for several frames while Morph is moving very slightly each frame but still looks fast at full speed. The most surprising things I noticed about this clip through this process is the reactions of John Silver to Morph’s movements as they are slightly delayed giving it that secondary movement but also how smooth Morph’s movements are based on how many scenes he is still versus changing on ones. I am glad to have been able to try out this process as it opened my eyes to how long something this “fast” should take, but also how subtle a move can be.