So as of the 23rd of December I have finished my one month of unpaid training for Rotoscoping with Animal Logic (read about it here). The training was full time and extremely intensive, I never had any idea that there was so much to rotoscoping and how in depth you can go for perfection.
I have learnt an abundance of new knowledge and I am very confident that I would smash any rotoscoping task thrown at me now. The course went through the basics of the Nuke work flow (which is the software used professionally for video compositing) such as animating roto mattes around people as they move around the shot. As well as onto more complex stuff like painting out tracker points in the background of a shot, removing rigging and wires, tracking shots for smoother roto and even stereoscopic (3D) rotoscoping which may sound exciting, but is literally just twice as much work and three times as tedious.
I found it pretty amazing that in the rotoscoping industry, given that it is such a laborious and time/cost consuming job. VFX houses and studios will often outsource the footage that needs rotoscoping to off shore rotoscope houses in places like India. This is obviously due to the cost of labour being significantly lower in these places, but it shocks me that outsourcing of services to off shore countries is not limited to things like telemarketing and basic manufacturing.
From here I wait to see whether they go on to choose me for one of their two upcoming stereo productions. These being Baz Lermans The Great Gatsby and the BBC’s upcoming feature film Walking with Dinosaurs 3D. In our final interview at Animal Logic yesterday, they told us that its likely that if you are chosen to come on board, it would be in mid January for Gatsby and July for Dinosaurs. So I am very much hoping I get onto Gatsby, not just because it is sooner, but also because it is a title that would be higher qualified on a CV as well as there would be more variation on the project I presume. By this I mean that it seems like Dinosaurs would mainly consist of roto’ing leaves and trees, where as Gatsby would be a whole range of things. Such as wire removal, rotoing out Leonardo Dicaprio and more varied locations.
In the mean time though I am also applying for roto jobs at other VFX houses around Sydney and Australia including Fuel, Fin, Rising Sun and Digital Domain, whom are setting up a studio in Sydney for their upcoming production Paradise Lost.
