Rotoscoping is one of the oldest animation techniques that allows producing realistic footages. Traditionally, animators traced over motion picture footage, frame by frame. In the visual effects industry, the process, even though similar, has a different purpose.
Rotoscoping is mostly used today to create a matte or mask for an element, so that it can be extracted and placed on a different background. It may even be masked out to change colours or any other set of reasons. It is widely used than you may realize. Rotoscoping helps filmmakers create scenes that would otherwise be impossible, challenging, expensive, or dangerous to produce in real life.
Read on, to find out about the industries that employ trained, skilled and certified rotoscoping artists for various job roles.
VFX studios
In bigger VFX companies, rotoscoping artists are sometimes attached to a show along with a Compositor or 2D Lead to direct them on the projects. If not on one show, then their services are used on different shows that the company is in charge of. In smaller companies, the roto artists gain experience by being a Junior Compositor and doing their own roto and prep work along with the compositing work.
Film Production Houses
There are more things than you can imagine that goes into the making of a film. Rotoscoping artist are often required at film production houses. Something as simple as tracing hair on an actor’s head is done by them. Even with the availability of advanced digital technologies, the makers of Guardians of the Galaxy used traditional rotoscoping techniques by using footage of a real racoon called Oreo to bring ‘Rocket’ to life.
Animation Companies
It was the legendary filmmaker Max Fleischer who invented the technique of rotoscope back in 1914 when he animated Popeye The Sailor and Betty the Boop. A few years later, when Disney used the footage to get a sense of a character’s movement, instead of tracing over the live-action footage. Many animators have come up with their own style of rotoscoping through over the years. And is still being used to create a variety of animated assets.
Gaming Companies
Game developer Jordan Mechner of Smoking Car Productions invented digital rotoscoping while creating the adventure game The Last Express. He had even used rotoscoping in his previous game projects Karateka and Prince of Persia. Since then, the gaming industry has always been another important sector where rotoscoping artists can build a career in.
As Rotoscoping continues to be a vital process within the animated and live action film production pipeline, there is huge demand for skilled roto artists. By completing a Vfx Film Making career course and getting the right skills, you can get hired by some of the top companies in the above-mentioned industries.
Whether you are an aspiring VFX professional or a superhero movie enthusiast, you are here because you are impressed by the visual effects of the original MCU series, The Falcon and The Winter Soldier.
The MCU, for more than a decade has been carrying the Torch of legendary CGI epics. But lately they have been trying to shift your attention from heavily CG-ed wars to grounded and realistic TV series like The Falcon and The Winter Soldier. These shows have given us CGI scenes so perfect that none of us could have ever doubted it to not be real. From the aerial chase in the first episode and a few others that we would be exploring shortly. And who other than Weta Digital could have been trusted with such epic sequences amidst the global pandemic!
The show received a total of five award nominations including a nomination for a 2021 Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Special Visual Effects. The VFX team involved was supervised by Charlie Tait who alongside Eric Leven have been part of the Weta digital team for over two decades. You may not have heard his name but we are pretty sure that you would have enjoyed his work, which includes Avengers: Infinity War, Deadpool, Alita: Battle Angel, and Game Of Thrones Season 8. K
Meant for theaters, the production had a blockbuster budget with each of the six episodes reportedly costing $25 million and featuring a total of 2,500 visual effects shots.
Here are our top 3 favourite breakdowns of the VFX shots:
Madripoor
Establishing shots of Madripoor were entirely CGed with Hong Kong as the key reference for it. The uniquely shaped sky-scrapers and the dense slum was a mixture of on-set special effects and VFX. It’s amazing how they could show the stark contrast between the slum life and the riches all through CG, since Madipoor was essentially a pirate city.
Credits: (c)Weta Digital and (c)Marvel Studios
Canyon chase sequence
It was the first of the sequence to make us realise the brilliance of MCU’s execution of fight scenes. But what makes it unique from the ones we saw in the movies was the different visual language using the GoPro mount.
Credits: (c)Weta Digital and (c)Marvel Studios
Digital double of Walker
The Walker you saw running and jumping through the window was a CG John Walker. A stunt double enacted the fall through the window on the car but the dents, exploding car windows, and the smashing through the house window was CGed. It might seem simple to create it but calculating the intensity of the smash is challenging.
Some scenes had digital doubles of both Anthony Mackie and Sebastian Stan. And since they have been in the MCU for a long time, they have become a few of the recognisable faces in the industry. Thus there wasn’t any room for the slightest of the mistakes in creating their CGs.
Credits: (c)Weta Digital and (c)Marvel Studios
Truck battle
The trucks were absolutely stationary! The only thing moving was the CGI-Ed road. The road was moved at the required speed (120km/s) while adding bits of rocks, dirt and dust being kicked up subtly to enhance realism in the scene. In addition to that the sequence was shot in Atlanta (USA) and thus sign boards and surrounding environment was required to be transformed to that of Germany.
Credits: (c)Weta Digital and (c)Marvel Studios via beforesandafters.com
Marvel is stepping up the game for other superhero franchises like The Boys (Prime) and the DCEU. We believe there are much more surprises waiting for us in ‘Doctor Strange: Multiverse of Madness’.
The Indian animation and visual effects industry, which commands around 10% of the global market share, has the potential to reach 20-25% by 2025, according to the latest media and entertainment industry report by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).
The two segments, which have together grown 17% from $0.7 billion in 2015 to $1.3 billion in 2019, can create 75,000-120,000 jobs over the next five years with their contribution to the nation’s gross domestic product rising by 0.06-0.08% over the same period, the report said.
Over the years, Indian-origin companies have been lauded for their visual effects design in several Hollywood films. Double Negative (DNEG), a Prime Focus group company, has won the Oscar four times for titles such as Blade Runner 2049, Interstellar, Ex Machina, and Inception. Meanwhile, Thor: The Dark World, was outsourced to Mumbai’s Prana Studios Ltd and Bengaluru-based Mr. X contributed to 2018 Oscar winner The Shape of Water.
India must learn to leverage its strengths to build its own animation, visual effects, gaming, comics (AVGC) industry, including strong technology skills and competitively priced talent, said the BCG report.
“These are sectors that do not just have great export potential to demonstrate the soft power of India but can also emerge as examples of Atmanirbhar Bharat (self-reliant India) if home-grown startups are given adequate push,” Amit Khare, secretary, ministry of information and broadcasting, had said at an event referring to AVGC and educational technologies that came to the fore following the coronavirus outbreak.
Information and broadcasting minister Prakash Javadekar had earlier said that animation, visual effects, gaming and comic are sunrise sectors and Indians are providing back-end support to top filmmakers of the world. “It is time that these professionals started doing more of this for our own films so that the use of animation and graphics in Indian films grows manifold.” Javadekar had said.
The push for animation is based on the success of Hollywood flicks such as The Jungle Book and The Lion King, whose 3D effects make for immersive big-screen viewing.
Though Indian movies may be running a bit late to catch up with the global CGI and VFX, many of the popular Hollywood movie production houses choose companies in India for their visual effects works.
Don’t believe us? Here are some VFX companies in India that are becoming hot favorites among Hollywood filmmakers:
Digital Domain
The visual effects of the chart topping Hollywood superhero movies like Deadpool, X-men Apocalypse and Spider-man: Homecoming were all made possible by Digital Domain.
Phantom FX
It is a leading VFX company today, and have created the awesome transformations of robots to cars for Michael Bay’s Transformers franchise. Along with it, they have worked on some other movies including The Avengers, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Ghostbusters.
Prana studios
When watching Game of thrones most of you would at least have had one awe struck moment viewing the majestic fire-breathing Dragons. Well, the next time you watch those dragons, don’t forget to tell your friends or family that it is the work of Indian visual effects artists.
MPC
Since its inception in December 2010, the Bangalore division of Moving Picture Company (MPC) has delivered high quality visual effects for Hollywood movies. The team has contributed VFX for movies including X-Men: Days of Future Past, Godzilla, Guardians of the Galaxy, Cinderella, and The Martian.
Prime Focus
Avatar, one of the most expensive movies ever made, with a budget of Rs. 1,100 crore was revolutionary in terms of its visual effects. 200+ VFX shots for this movie was done by none other than the Indian company Prime Focus.
Prime focus founded by Namit Malhotra has now proved itself worthy enough to be the world’s largest independent and integrated media services powerhouse. To their credit are Hollywood entertainers like Gravity, Interstellar, Shrek, and Tron: Legacy, among others.
After winning the Oscar for the Best Visual Effects in 2010 for Gravity, in 2015 the team again got their well-deserved win for the same category for Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar!
A year later, Prime Focus again received five Oscar nominations for their works in Tree of Life, X-Men: First Class, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, and Hugo.
These simply prove that the VFX studios in India have already made their mark in the global cinema. The industry needs more and more trained VFX professionals to create such marvelous films. Now is the right time for you to enter the industry. Arena’s Vfx career course can definitely help you get started.
Which is your favorite VFX-heavy film till date? Let us know in the comments below.
Arena Animation –India’s premiere Media and Entertainment Training Institute offers power packed programs that help shape a Student Creative Career. Arena Animation Sayajigunj Located in vadodara one of Best and No 1 training Institute in Gujarat andwest Zone For Animation –Vfx and Gaming courses which caters need of student to become Professional In Animation Film making – Vfx Film making and Gaming courses in vadodara .
The world of visual effects relies on the wizardry of VFX Compositors & Video Editors. From Spiderman jumping across buildings to Baahubali fighting an entire army, everything is the magic of post-production, of which Compositing and Editing are the two most important aspects.
The Indian Animation & VFX industry is estimated to reach ` 151.80 billion in 2023.The Media & Entertainment industry is also expected to provide 65 lakh jobs by 2022.*
VFX Compositors are responsible for photo-realistic output by seamlessly integrating live action footage & computer graphics 2D and / or 3D, special effects. Video Editing requires visual aesthetic, a sense of pacing to draw out the emotion of the story, and an attention to detail. The artistic skills required for the role of VFX Compositor and Video Editor is the understanding of the elements of composition, lighting and shadow and colour. Therefore, Arena Animation has introduced the VFX Compositing & Editing Program.
The Vfx Compositing and Editing program Gives students better understanding about the concepts and fundamentals required for 3d Visual Effects Compositing and Video Editing.It helps students demonstrate the VFX pre-production process of Animatics and 3D Previsualization (Previz)It helps them learn and demonstrate the VFX process of Roto, Paint, Roto-prep, Keying, Matchmoving, Live Action Matte Painting & CompositingIt makes students understand and utilize the VFX Compositing workflow using industry-relevant software – Nuke, Silhouette & 3D EqualizerIt helps them learn and understand the Grammar of the edit to demonstrate Video Editing skills using Adobe Premiere / Final Cut Pro.It teaches students the skills of Colour Grading for Web Series, Commercial Ads, TV & Films.
The Student will learn the Following software’s :-
– Adobe Photoshop
– Final Draft
– Adobe Audition and adobe Premiere pro
– Adobe After Effects
– iclone
– silhouette
– 3d Equalizer
– Final cut pro
The Course will give Opportunities to the Students of Vadodara who want to make Vfx Career with professional environment –technology and proper dedicated institution that really caters the demand of 3d Visual Effects Artist required by industry.
After the Completion of the Course the students are eligible with multiple job opportunities and profiles available in Vfx Industry and they can choose from it such as :-Previz Artist-Compositor-Roto artist-3D tracking Artist-Paint artist-Roto –prep Artist-Matte Paint Artist-MatchMove Artist-Video Editor-Motion Graphics Designer&Colour Grading Artist.
The program opens doors to multiple career avenues in many industries such as Advertising –Retail- Animation and Film Vfx Studios- Media and Entertainment industry – Digital Advertising and Many More.
Arena Animation Sayajigunj – India’s premiere Media and Entertainment training institute. We offers power-packed courses that help shape a student’s creative career. We trains students in industry-relevant, employment-oriented skills through advanced tools.
