paul_lane

This shot was rotoed by another Roski student from USC by the name of Andrew Emmons. He brought a welcomed change of style to the film.

sam_can

As of right now, I estimate the rotoscoped sections of Pepperland to consist of over 3000 individually painted images. When the film was in it's early stages I was still experimenting with the look so the rotoscope process took considerably more time. As I began streamlining my workflow, I was able to complete a much greater volume of work in each sitting. But after about a year I began slowing down again due to the physical toll my body was taking from rotoscoping so many hours each and every day.

In January of 08 I decided to enlist some help in order to stay on schedule. I decided to recruit from the University of Southern California's Roski School of Fine Arts. Aside from staying on schedule, I was also interested in seeing what someone else would come up with if given a thorough explanation of how the process works, a limited amount of coaching and access to a wide variety of visual references.

ripo

Meggs

haha

The following shot was completely by an excellent artist named Clover. This is the second shot she has completed for the film and is currently working on a third. I wish I had found her sooner. You may find a link to her personal site in the sidebar section of this blog entitled, Links.

Pepperland trailer

I think I might just go with this section of the film for the trailer for Pepperland. It would be nice to cut a really nice one but there are other areas of the film that need my attention.

2shot_sam

I finished this shot some time ago but I don't believe I ever added it to the blog. I wasn't sure which frame to load up from this shot since I did a number of interesting things with the rotoscoping.


You can see that I played with the shapes within the rotoscoping to accentuate the momentum of the skater. Also, towards the end, I decided to throw the Washington DC flag on the underside of his board in red. Subtle, but that's what I wanted.

paul_og12

This was the last shot I worked on before the old machine gave up on me. It shows the overlap transitions that I mentioned in the post directly below. I began to work this type of transitioning in at other points of the film as well. But until the new machine arrives I am restricted to tracking down music rights.

This shot took approximately 2 months to complete and consists of over 450 hand drawn images.

new looks

So I've been thinking of possible variations for the roto look in the film. Nothing that will break away from the stencil inspired look that helped get this film started though. And any changes made at this point need to add some sort of additional amount of depth in order to be worth doing. I'm not going to make any major changes just to "spice" it up. I finally came across something recently that I like and it also serves a purpose by separating the skate footage.

I made a long sequence from still frames of marble surfaces that I had given the black and white treatment to. I then used the black layer from the roto to act as a silhouette matt for the marble layer. I also adjusted the timing so that the marble images change at the same frame rate as the roto.

The following clip was the shot I as working on when I began using this look.

I think it looks good and will be a nice way of differentiating between footage shot at Pulaski and footage from other areas of the city.

I also re-rendered a shot I completed a while ago of Sam Weitzen down at Pulaski. I posted the shot when I finished it as 236x. I think the marble worked out well.

Before:

After:

I'm going to look into other surfaces to use as textures for the skate footage that's shot in other areas of the city. Things like street lines and asphalt, brick, concrete, etc.

no_money

I finished the skating part of this shot a while ago. I'd love to go back and clean it up but I've got too many other shots still to do. That's the problem with animating like this. You never get to the look that you're truly happy with until most of the film is practically finished.

The second part of this shot was a beast to do because of the varying frame rates and motion tracking. I had to really finesse it to make it all look like it was running at 12 fps and at the same time because it's actually at 29.97. But I like the shot. I still need to make some minor adjustments to when the outlines of people start tracking to the wall but it's almost there.

This is definitely the finished look for the interviewee though. I've only done 2 other sections of interview so I might go back and redo those to look more like this section.

paul_can_1

So I finished another shot. I tried something new for this shot and I hope it wasn't a big waste of time. I've had a couple people suggest that I add some variation to the roto style. I've been ignoring those suggestions up until now because I chose the style that I have been using for a very specific reason (I'll write more about that reason later). I had to try it though because it's better to know something isn't going to work then to wonder what if. But as of right now I doubt I'm going to use this version of the shot.

1shot_timed_ae

This is the first shot of skating in the film. I did adjust the timing of the shot a little. Right now it looks somewhat jarring because it happens almost immediately. But I keep saying there is going to be an intro of sorts that brings the viewer into the city. An intro should give me enough time to establish looks and reveal some subtle visual trickery that I intend to do throughout the film. So by the time we get to this shot it should be old news.

The first line of dialogue also appears over top of this shot on the right side. I'm not completely happy with the roto job though. It was the first attempt at rotoing the interview footage so the style is pretty rough.

wall rides

I have two wall rides rotoed. The second one in the film leaves a stencil on the wall because it coincides with a crucial point in the interview where Paul is talking about skaters adapting to the city. I haven't decided if the first wall ride is going to leave a stencil though. I'd rather he leave black wheel marks on the wall and white marks on the metal. But that's a tracking battle beyond just tacking a frame up there.

236x

I'm pretty happy with how this shot turned out. I did some sound design tests on this shot as well. If I go that route I'll definitely need to look into getting some help.

hand rail

I finished this shot a while ago but I forgot to post it.

flatbar

I'm pretty happy about finishing this shot. It came out really well. It links 3 finished shots together and for the first time I can see how things are going to work. Whenever I watch the rough cut of the film, the finished shots seem really out of place. That kind of worried me. But I kept telling myself that once I got a number of finished shots strung together it would work differently. And I was right. When you get used to the style you can tell what's going on much more easily.


I'd like to add red to the flat bar in this shot. It would look like the board leaves red streaks on the bar as he slides it. But I'm going to try a couple things involving red in the shot before this one so I'll have to see how that works first. I don't know that I want 2 shots back to back with large chunks of red.

ledge

Another shot finished, maybe. This is another shot that I'd like to come back to if I have time. When the guy gets the board back up to his feet after the kick flip there's a really nice snapping motion that gets lost in the rotoscoping and frame rate adjustment. I'd like to see what I can do to bring that snap back because that was a big part of the reason why I liked this shot. I'd also like to make some more adjustments to the background treatment. But we'll see. I like it the way it is but it would be nice to put some more time on it.

construction

Finished another shot today. It is the first one I've finished since I've been back in D.C. I've been trying out different locations and I think I finally found a spot where I can get some work done.





I also just found out on Thursday that I won't be able to stay in D.C. till August 26th like I had originally planned. Unfortunately I have to be back in SoCal by August 2nd because my attorney sucks. I had been worried about being in D.C. for too long but now I'm worried I won't be here long enough. Pretty pissed about having to fly back on my 30th birthday too.

nose grab

I finally finished the shot called nose grab. It's a pretty sweet shot. The guy takes a 9 stair rail but flips his board by the nose with his hand before he hits the rail. I didn't even notice it the first time I watched the shot because it's so dark and the quality of the rip is so bad. But I realized most other people probably wouldn't notice it either. Especially if they only watched the film once. So I decided to make the hand grab one of the elements highlighted with red.


The skating was good but the shot was much more difficult then I had expected. I started the shot because it was short and it was dark. I needed to see how a dark shot was going to turn out. It ended up being a serious pain. I had to redo it 3 times and I'm still not completely satisfied with it. But I have to keep moving because I spent almost 3 days on the shot and it was only 24 frames. I got through the shot paul man in 3 days and that was 131 frames.

tests

I compiled this video for a presentation that I gave to the animation dept at USC. It shows a number of tests that I had been working on since the fall of 2006. The video is broken up into 5 sections - rotoscope tests, background tests, interview tests, examples of footage from the first shoot and a test assembly showing my first attempt at bridging the city and skating footage.

paul_man

131 frames, 3 days. It hurt.

3rd try, shot 4

This is the first shot I did in final form which is the third overall shot that I've done. It shows up relatively early in the film. I've started working in small areas of red as well. I don't intend for there to be red in all the shots. In fact very few shots will have red. In this shot it is only there for aesthetic reasons. I'll admit, I just liked it. But there are shots that use red to highlight background elements that were washed out by the treatment I've given the live action .

This particular shot took me about a day and a half if I remember correctly. It was during this shot that I started adding variations to the line work. The roto style still isn't perfected in this shot but it's definitely much closer.

first 2

These are the first two shots that I worked on back during my pre-vis studies sometime in early spring of 2007. There has been minor changes of the technique, BG treatment and frame timing since. Luckily I was able to go back and make those changes so I can still use these shots in the finished film.

You can see in these two frames that the roto style is slightly different from what I'm doing now. The white sections are more like shapes and there isn't much variation from that. My current shots are a mix of shapes and vaious types of line work. Some are derived directly from the footage while some are more tag-like and don't necessarily follow any aspect of the original footage. I use the tag-like line work as a form of shading so that I don't always have large chunks of white areas. I really like where the overall look is going because it seems more randomized. I'm still polishing the roto style but I know what I'm looking for. It's just a matter of doing it a couple 1000 more times.