Rough Frame

Got all 100 frames outlined. Here is a preview of what I'm going for:



I'm going for an illustrated / crayon look on purpose. Still need to put in the rocket boosters, the booster effects, and the cloud zooming background.

Plan Update

Re-shot the reference material. Same concept as before, but this will be a lot easier to trace, since there's actually a figure in the frame, and not a place-holder object.

Rotoscope Plan

My line: "Luckily, one of his rocket boosters malfunctioned."

So this midget with rocket boosters attached to his feet has just taken off into the air. My shot will be of the midget in mid air, and the camera is close to him, looking at him from the front. The camera will track/orbit around him until it is placed behind him. At that point, the rocket booster will cease to function, and the camera will no longer follow him closely. He'll rocket off into the distance and spiral out of control, either exiting the frame or becoming a pinpoint on the horizon.

This is the reference image:


The backpack represents the midget. I'm thinking about re-shooting this when I have time this weekend, to get a better reference to work off of. In this shot, Paul held the backpack as I tracked around it with the camera, and at the malfunction point, he ran off into the distance with it. What I'm thinking will work better, is if I set up some sort of action figure with a cape, flying Superman-style. A fan will be blowing on it, creating ripples in the cape. This will give me a better starting point for the change in perspective as the camera moves, as well the rippling cape.

The background will be a semi-looping one created in separate PSD files from the midget. Clouds will be flying by, and move accordingly with the camera. It'll be easier to composite the two together later.

GIF Animation - Custom Animation

I don't think very abstractly when it comes to my creative pursuits. So I asked myself the question, "What would a rotating Star Wars helmet actually be doing?" My guess is it's being portrayed in a hologram. So with my custom variation, I attempted to recreate the hologram-look as seen in the Star Wars movies. Probably could have gotten it closer to the real thing if I had used After Effects, but this'll do for now.

I did two versions of this. The first one is on a black background. The second utilizes the GIF transparency, so theoretically it is somewhat more see-through on any kind of background like the real holograms, though the quality obviously suffers around the edges since GIFs can't handle fine feathering.

GIF Animation - Tint Animation

With the tinted version, I experimented by leaving the midtones alone, and only adjusting highlights and shadows for most of the frames. The result is that the background stays more similar through each frame than it would otherwise.

GIF Animation - Raw Animation

Here is the unaltered animation of the helmet. Yeah, the typical rotating-object GIF. No points for originality there. I'd say it works all right here though since it is a relatively round object...other kinds of objects might not rotate as nicely.

GIF Animation - Raw Images

Took these images of my custom-built Mandalorian costume helmet. Locked down the camera, set up adequate illumination, and rotated the helmet 1/8 of the way around for each shot. (thus, 8 shots and a full rotation)