Are You Ready to Rotoscope?

A rotoscope frame without the video footage

In less than 12 hours, we'll be fully loaded on a bus and headed out to New York City, with less than a week to go until the live broadcast of the Greater New York BattleCry! So how do CCMers prepare?

Well, some, of course, are doing laundry, so they have clean clothes to last the time we'll be there. And some are doing last-minute runs to WalMart to buy new socks, since the dryers in our houses and dorms seem to eat those more than most.

Some, who have been busy planning a few secret projects for NEXT YEAR'S ATF tour, are getting notes back, for refining scripts.

The rest of us? We're finishing a project.

It's been a hectic three weeks as we try to clear production enough for travel--in addition to everything new we'll have in New York, we also have pieces for Global Expeditions and Extreme Camps to finish, as well as promos for the Honor Academy and next year's tour--and at the end, we have graphics work to finish on a piece for the BattleCry opener.


A frame, zoomed in, showing the masks being applied

Have you ever wondered what it takes to make the background of a video suddenly become animated? It's a process we call "rotoscoping," and it's a process that can require attention from EVERYBODY. Basically, in Adobe AfterEffects, we go frame by frame through a clip of video, and build a mask over things we need to overlay with animation--or things that can't be covered.

In this case, we're masking the wall, so we also have to cut around the person in front of it, so that she stays all the right colors.


And we have to do this for EVERY FRAME.

Parts of the crew have been at it for days. Some of us got pulled in as last-minute reinforcements this afternoon. All told, it's looking great. Look for the finished product Friday at the New York BattleCry.

More updates coming from the road! Keep watching.