Rotoscoping involves using a piece of recorded footage to trace around to create a frame by frame animation – this is what I will be doing using Adobe Media Encoder and Adobe Animate. This process was used for the production of the award-winning animated film, Chico & Rita.
First, you need to encode the video file as an H.264 file. Do this by opening Media Encoder and importing the video file using the plus button on the panel.
It will then show up in the large space where you can access it. The format should be set to H.264. Right-click the column containing your video and select export settings.
This will open a dialogue box with options concerning how your file is exported. Once again, ensure that the format is set to H.264 before selecting ok. After this, press the play button on the original panel to successfully encode the video.
After this, open Adobe Animate, go to the control panel opening the file dropdown before selecting ‘new’.
In the dialogue box that opens up, select ActionScript 3.0, set the width to 1920 px and the height to 1080 px before clicking ok.
This will create a new file which is set up in the correct format.
To import your video file, go to the file dropdown, import and then import video. In the dialogue box that appears, ‘select embed H.264 video in timeline’ and click browse to find your video. Press next and, if you don’t want audio, then deselect that option before pressing next again and the finish.
After successfully importing the video, it will be available in the library panel on the right-hand side where you can drag it from onto the stage, where you do all of the work.
To make a symbol, first delete the clip that is already on the stage before going to the insert dropdown. Select the new symbol option before ensuring that the type is set to movie clip. Name the symbol appropriately and select ok.
This is what is known as a crumb trail where you can go back to scene 1, the main stage after selecting the symbol. The symbol will also appear in the library.
Drag the original clip onto the stage and a dialogue box will appear talking about the number of frames needed. Select yes and the video clip will appear as it did before.
Rename the layer ‘video’ and create another layer and name it ‘rotoscope’ in the timeline panel. Ensure that the video layer is locked.
To begin rotoscoping, select the rotoscope layer, play the video and stop it where there is movement. Right-click where the playhead is and select insert keyframe on the timeline panel where a black rectangle should appear afterwards.
Pull out the options panel to make it into two columns to have access to all of the drawing tools. Select the pencil tool before selecting the pencil mode dropdown and pressing ink to allow a smooth finish on your lines.
Proceed to draw around the image. Each time you want to move onto a new frame, move the playhead along, right click and select insert blank keyframe before drawing around the figure again.
When exporting your movie, go back to scene 1 in the crumb trail. Then, you need to go to Modify > Document and in the dialogue box, press match contents to fit the stage to the size of your actual animation. Go into the symbol containing your animation and change the video layer into a guide as you won’t need to export that part. Do this by right-clicking on the layer before selecting ‘Guide’. Go to File > Export > Export video and a dialogue box will appear. The ‘ignore stage colour’ option will make the background transparent when it’s exported and ensure that the ‘Convert video in Adobe Media Encoder’ option is also deselected. Select the browse option to decide where to save the video and finally press export.
Here is what I have completed of my animation so far:
Rotoscoping uses frame by frame animation and so is very time-consuming. One thing I had to work through was finding a way to draw each frame efficiently so that I didn’t spend too much time on them individually. From this query, I decided to focus on the main shapes and features of the video that would bring the animation together. For instance, the prominent wrinkles in the jumper and how they move throughout the animation helps to add some of the realistic nature so that the animation doesn’t appear to flat.
Something important to remember is how you’re working through drawing the frames. This is because you have to draw the entirety of the frame and keep consistency in how much detail you’re going into – you need to be wary of your previous frames so that the animation flows and doesn’t end up with appearing and disappearing features.
Jasmine Cooper 