Rotoscoping

13

ROTO AND THE HUMAN FIGURE

A good portion of a roto artist’s day is spent isolating human figures. The reasons vary quite often, but in most cases your focus object (or objects) will be human beings for which mattes must be created that isolate them from the rest of the shot. And not necessarily even a whole human figure. Sometimes it’s as simple as sky replacement. This happens frequently. A director will stipulate that the actors’ performances are wonderful but that he dislikes the cloud formations in the sky or the secondary actions happening in the background. Often a plane will inconveniently fly into the shot, which will require a matte for everything under the horizon line.

Whatever the case, you’ll find yourself having to roto human ...