Hello, Roto

I was dabbling with rotoscoping tonight and thought I would show some of what I did. The whole clip is only about 2.5 seconds, but it is a fun little experiment.

My youngest brother captured this shot of me and my other brother, and I printed each frame and retraced it in pencil, then superimposed a cartoon character in place of my brother and myself.
It gets a little more interesting, but I don't want to give away the ending...

Hopefully I get some more free time from work soon so I can finish it and put it all together as a video to post here... for now, view the first 1 second of an early pencil test (I like to test as I go along to make sure it is moving the way I want) :

crazy week

I had a week off work, and went to the NFAF. while driving, while waiting, and while about to nod off in the hotel, I drew. And drew. Here a few of the weird things that came out the end of my pencil.

A claymation duo called Wallet and Grimace:

A caveman attempting to invent corporal punishment:
A dragon-creature spewing ash:

A pet alligator whose job is in danger of termination:

A somber satyr playing a melancholy tune on his bone-pipe:

My brother wearing a funny hat he got:

A grotesque couple:

And some preliminary planning sketches for some additional bits of the squirrel animation I have [not] been working on:

'kay, bye.

let there be neon

I have been working on an effect for the next animation project, to make a neon light flicker. First I made a separate drawing of the lights, the opposite color they would be when I put them on top of my background painting.
Putting this image on a separate layer in photoshop, i inverted the colors, so the black would be a bright white, and the other colors would be neon-looking.


i made a separate version of the background with the colors taken out, to use for the un-lit version. This way i can make the neon appear to flicker when it is animated, alternating between the two versions.

oh, and i have been playing with some lighting effects for the other parts of the room, too.