Rodrigo Sousa

Uncanny Alley- WIP

Added 2024-07-04 13:59:50 +0000 UTC

Here is a breakdown of two shots of episode 01 of "Uncanny Alley"

Here is the animatic version, this drawings were made on my sketchbook to have a overall vision of the episode. Here It's more about timing and shot transition that making nice drawings.

Here is the rough/ tiedown pass. The first shot I used rotoscopy of my hand that I retimed. The next shot is animated in staight ahead maggot per maggot. The rotoscopy and straight ahead were techniques I used a lot in this shorts. For realistic human movement I would use a lot of rotoscopy and when there isnt much movement I do static images. The straigh ahead I used more for the creatures and insects or moving backgrounds, it gives a more organic and alive feel.

This previous pass between rough and tiedown is enough for me to go into cleaning phase. I use a thin line (in tvpaint) and try to keep it stable when the animation is slow and woul add some wiggliness to it once the spacing increases between poses.

Since the shorts are all in black and white, its quite easy to color each frame on tvpaint and to have color continuity between shots. In the secon shot you can see a white highlight that I animated on the maggot body, this layer was used on compositing with a gausian blur effect to add a bit more volume to the creatures.

And here is the final result as seen on the short film. I added a changing light to give the feeling of being in the theatre with the scree changing luminosity. I also added grain and some dust particles to give a more vintage/ old black and white feel to it.