First Compositing Test

I haven't spoken a whole lot yet about what my project is on this here blog yet, but I shall be talking about that in my next post. For now I'll just give the basics needed to set up this video. I am planning a short film that will integrate 2D characters into live action footage. This is my very first test of integrating the two together. I shot this with my compact camera, so it's grainy and compressed. This also means the tracking points aren't as accurate as I'd like, resulting in the 2D element floating a little. I'll be borrowing a nicer camera from the University for subsequent experiments. There's also very little animation to speak of, but that wasn't necessary at this point for reasons I'll go into.

The aim of this was to test two specific things:

1. Tracking - how simple is it to track camera movements and apply them to the animated element?
   
   
2. Environment - how well can the animation be integrated?

I'm keen to keep the 2D elements as flat and cartoony as I'd draw them in their own context (i.e. comics & animation - more on this on the next post) but I want them to affect the environment. So I did some pretty simple (or down-right crude) effects in the composite to achieve this.

Click read more below to learn more about the various elements I experimented with in the compositing...

A still from the video footage was used as a background layout to create the animation.

Some guides were drawn on to work out where the reflection should appear in the glass, then reflection was animated (which in this case was just a duplicate of the first one bar the eyes).


Video footage.

The animation was imported on top of the footage. Using tracking points, the movement of the camera was tracked and then applied to the animation layer.

A rough shadow was then added by blurring a black circle and changing it's blending mode to... colour burn in this instance, I believe. I think for anything other than soft light, a more sophisticated shadow would have to be animated.

This is the crudest part. The animation layer was simply duplicated and flipped (with the motion tracking applied to it as well).

The opacity was then reduced.

Some blurs were applied to replicate the diffused reflections of other objects on the floor.

The brightness and colour on the animation layer were adjusted and noise was added to match the video footage.

Then the reflection animation was added and motion tracked.

A bit of reference footage with a shirt standing in for Elwood's reflection in the glass.

The reflection layer was then blurred, darkened and colour corrected. Creating the reflection like this is really hard because it needs to overlay the other reflections on the glass but be transparent over what's beyond the glass. Something I don't think I can do without having a matching shot without any glass. Same goes for the floor. But hey, it's animation and effects, it's all about cheating and trickery!