Working on something new!

The 5$ Tier and up might have seen this already in the recent Patreon videos I have posted, but I wanted to share what's going on with all of you of course! 

I had the idea that I wanted to try to combine the technique I used for Sensations where I rotoscope animated my own filmed footage into 2D characters, but this time in 3 dimensions!!!

I thought that if I film a camera move following an actor through a space, I could then motion track that footage, recreate it into a digital environment, have the camera motion I filmed be represented within the 3D scene and then let the actors motion drive a 2D character that I would draw in the end. This lets me combine a large group of technologies and hopefully create something impressive. 

I shot it all on a steadycam and Jana helped me out with some acting. I wanted to make sure the camera motion was smooth and not shaky as that would otherwise be transferred to the tracked 3D camera. A slight drift and natural movement to the camera looks really realistic and can actually be quite hard to recreate in post, so doing it this way has many benefits.

In the video at the top of this post you can see the raw footage in the lower right corner and a hardware render of some progress I have made in the main frame. 

I did a very crude roto of Jana to cut her out from the background. As her movement is purely reference in the end I dont need a clean cutout. Its nice to have her sit in 3D space so I can build the environment around her and use her as a placeholder until I have the drawn character in there.

I want it to be set in a sort of floating city, slightly industrial and somewhat overgrown. Janas character will come out of a shop, waive goodbye to the owner, almost stumble over some creature (currently represented by a sphere) and then board a shuttle.

As this shot is a standalone project I can really go to town with the world building and explore anything I want.

I am mega excited to keep working on this and share more with you guys! I will be posting real time workflow videos here on Patreon which the Master tier and up can watch.