Animating process

Youtube Video's 

I origionally planned to use my own footage for rotoscoping but as the story developed using my own footage become unrealistic. Once I had decided to incorporate animals within the animation I began looking for footage elsewhere. Youtube was the most useful source as they have such a huge libary to choose from. I primarily looked for footage taken from the Islands of Hawaii to ensure the footage was an accurate dipiction of Hawaii.

Screenshot Video

For rotoscoping I would need a large amount of frames close enough together to give the illusion of movement. For this I would press shift, command, 3 to take a screen shot of the video clips that I had put on full screen. I would use to space bar to quickly play and pause the screen for me to take the screen shots so closely together.    

Number Frames

I created a folder for each scene in order to keep everything organised. 

  

Open in gimp using two layers

For rotoscoping I would need to trace over frames that make a moving image when put together. To achieve this digitally I needed to open each frame in the gimp program in two layers. By doing this I could Lower the transparency of the screen shot and draw on the white layer. Using a tablet the process was fairly simular to tracing pictures manually. After I had completed the drawing process I would drag the transparency down to 0% leaving only the outlines I had made.  

Set transparency

In order to clearly see the pen marks the transparancy setting of the picture needs to be reduced. I bring it down to 50% as this gives me an equal visual of both the origional picture and the new canvas I will be drawing onto. After the picture is completed I will need to bring it down to 0% leaving only the new layer I have added.  

Trace over screenshot (rotoscoping)

Gradually fade out images (-10% each frame)

For each new scene added in I would need to include a transition. This involved me decreasing the transparency of the pen on the outgoing frame and increasing the transparency of the incoming. This process would take 10 frames to complete on each of the scenes makeing it a total of 20. These transition frames would take the lonest to complete as I would have to overlap images and alter the settings of the tools I was using.

Fade in next image (+10% each frame) 

Export image as pdf file

Once completed I would need to export the image. Usually Gimp would automatically save the file as an XCF file, this allows me to go back to the picture with all the settings the same as how I left them. This doesnt allow me to use the picture in editing programs such as iMovie therefore I would have to go on save as, then type in the name of the file replacing the '.XCF' with '.JPG'. This would turn the file into a picture file meaning I could use it like I would a photograph.

Final frame folder 

All of the finished frames were places in the same folder so I could highlight and put them all into iMovie at the same time.