Ultimate football highlights

[Scott Novasic]

need more detail

SuperNova
Animation & Visual Effects
Scott Novasic
Los Angeles Ca
web:https://web.mac.com/finaleffects

[Michael Ricks]

lots and lots of roto work

[Michael Ricks]

Totally off topic, but your demo reel is pretty awesome, scott. Looks like you’ve done a lot of work. Hope I can say I’ve done that much some day.

[Chris Wright]

this is a lot of roto work, even for monet. With no key, background plate, color separation, luma diff, your stuck with brain vs brawn, or eyeballs falling out before hand cramps up.

[Joseph W. bourke]

I’m sure AE is up to the challenge; its’ masking has improved over the last few revs, but I would jump to Combustion in a second when presented with this type of project. Maybe you can get them to shell out for a seat of Combustion 4. While it’s different enough from AE, you’ll get an “aha” moment when it all sinks in, and the masking is much better than After Effects, being based on the Inferno feature set.

If you have to use AE, I would start immediately logging the best shots in which there is high contrast between the player and the background. Also plan to use the best, shortest shots that tell your story. If you happened to watch the recent NBA playoffs, you would have seen a HUGE rotoscoping project, with footage going back to the fifties. No green screen here, but notice that none of the dozens of shots in the open is much more than a second long, other than the few “hero” shots which tie it all together. There’s one long Michael Jordan shot in there that must have been a nightmare to rotoscope.

The key is to pick your cleanest point in the clip, start your mask there, and then work backwards and forwards, making your first several masks rough, and working towards a final, frame by frame tweak. It’s not fun, but it’s a learning experience; and take care of your wrists and hands – heavy roto work will give you tennis elbow and carpal tunnel if you’re not careful. Good luck.

Joe Bourke
Art Director / WMUR-TV