I did a video on this awhile back, which mixed old style stop motion with digital in order to work around a puppet I had designed poorly. More recently I used it to enhance a scene in Jack vs Lanterns because I wasn't happy with the in camera movement we had set up for the pumpkin goop in a scene. (I'm still not entirely happy, but at this budget level if I'm entirely happy it's a real treat).
I'm always reluctant to reveal in camera or simple editing tricks because then when people see them they're somehow less impressed than when they thought I used some more complex method. Seriously, the effect looks the same as when they saw it in the movie, but when I've revealed how simple some of the vines moving in Lumber vs Jack were to achieve people remarked with a sigh and a "Oh, I thought you used some fancy CGI or something," as if accomplishing something with a tried and true method somehow makes it "less".
Anyway, in this particular scene I had used my regular bag of tricks. Reverse footage, jiggling the gelatin based goop and pushing it from off screen with a hair dryer were all employed to varying levels of effectiveness. But the scene needed a bit "extra". I'm no CG guru and really, that wouldn't fit into the movie's overall retro look well, so I went with the next best thing. Cartoonish 2D animation.
How the trick was done.
Basically I took frame captures from the scene, isolated the "goop" and treated it like a stop motion puppet, building individual frames to make it appear to move. Had I thought of it before the scene, I may have tried building a wire puppet of latex and wire with a shiny, gooey appearance, but this was something that came up after the fact. The beauty of digital is that you can make a lot of decisions after the fact if you have the time, patience and software/app to handle the job.
I built the frames in Photoshop, as I did in the stop motion video above, but this time I used the liquefy and smudge tools to manipulate the puppet instead of the "puppet" setting, since the blob has no real appendages. The real key was separating it from the background using a TIFF with a transparency layer so that the manipulation of the goop would affect as little of the surrounding image as possible. This also solves the problem of trying to "key" it in the image later.
After the movie is finished, if I get a chance, I'll try to do a video on the process. Meanwhile, feel free to ask questions and discuss with others in the comments below.
What it looks like on screen.
Here is a brief look at one of the animations.
You can see the second part on my YouTube Channel
A Magician should never reveal his secrets.
And movie magic sometimes loses it's flare when explained before viewing.
I'm always reluctant to reveal in camera or simple editing tricks because then when people see them they're somehow less impressed than when they thought I used some more complex method. Seriously, the effect looks the same as when they saw it in the movie, but when I've revealed how simple some of the vines moving in Lumber vs Jack were to achieve people remarked with a sigh and a "Oh, I thought you used some fancy CGI or something," as if accomplishing something with a tried and true method somehow makes it "less".
Anyway, in this particular scene I had used my regular bag of tricks. Reverse footage, jiggling the gelatin based goop and pushing it from off screen with a hair dryer were all employed to varying levels of effectiveness. But the scene needed a bit "extra". I'm no CG guru and really, that wouldn't fit into the movie's overall retro look well, so I went with the next best thing. Cartoonish 2D animation.
How the trick was done.
Basically I took frame captures from the scene, isolated the "goop" and treated it like a stop motion puppet, building individual frames to make it appear to move. Had I thought of it before the scene, I may have tried building a wire puppet of latex and wire with a shiny, gooey appearance, but this was something that came up after the fact. The beauty of digital is that you can make a lot of decisions after the fact if you have the time, patience and software/app to handle the job.
I built the frames in Photoshop, as I did in the stop motion video above, but this time I used the liquefy and smudge tools to manipulate the puppet instead of the "puppet" setting, since the blob has no real appendages. The real key was separating it from the background using a TIFF with a transparency layer so that the manipulation of the goop would affect as little of the surrounding image as possible. This also solves the problem of trying to "key" it in the image later.
After the movie is finished, if I get a chance, I'll try to do a video on the process. Meanwhile, feel free to ask questions and discuss with others in the comments below.
What it looks like on screen.
Here is a brief look at one of the animations.
