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After Effects — Rotoscoping and Roto Brush
Rotoscoping is a technique to create an animation by tracing a real footage frame by frame. The technique was invented in early 1900s to help animators to reproduce realistic movements. Fleischer brothers, who invented the technique, and Disney, which incorporated it after the original patent was expired, didn’t simply reproduce the reality into animations, but developed unique animation styles by emphasizing elements in real movements.
Isolating an element using Roto Brush
Roto Brush in After Effects help animators to isolate an object from a footage, so the object can be composed with another footage or background, which are called Mattes.
Although Roto Brush is an intuitive and powerful tool to group moving objects, it is processor intensive. Hence, it is important not to keep your footage unnecessarily large nor long, and the contrast between objects and background should be high in order for the tool to do great jobs for you.
Step 1: Create a footage with the right resolution and duration
Step 2: Paint an object with the brush tool
Hold the command key and move your mouse up or down to adjust the brush size. Then in the first frame of the footage, brush the area you want to add. If the selected area bleeds out of the target object, hold option key and brush to exclude the bleed area.
Step 3: Refine Edge tool for complex contour
For complex edge like hair, Refine Edge tool that analyzes details.
