..and other Individual Rotoscope Animation Ideas
One of the super cool things about Do Ink Animation and Drawing app is that you can pull in photos or videos and draw over them. Drawing over each frame of a video is a technique called Rotoscope Animation. You probably have seen this technique in the famous music video from the 80's A-Ha's Take Me On. I also LOVE this music video and song by Andrew Huang, Every Night I Dream of Dancing, which is a rotoscope collaboration using 30 artists crowdsourced through the internet.
I tried many ways to instruct my students to create rotoscope animations collaboratively, but I've yet to have them create their own...until now. I think I've come up with some ideas that can make this project manageable for very little people.
I tried many ways to instruct my students to create rotoscope animations collaboratively, but I've yet to have them create their own...until now. I think I've come up with some ideas that can make this project manageable for very little people.
Plan One: 1 second loops
These 1 second animations loop nicely and can be converted to gifs
   | Plan for individual Rotoscope Animations as Gifs over White
|
Tutorial for Rotoscoping in Do Ink app
Plan Two: Color the Loop
 | When you're done with plan one (above) you can stay in the app and get a little fancier with your rotoscope. You can layer a color below your contour line drawing or you can use the fill bucket and fill it with color (but make sure all your lines connect into shapes or you will "spill" instead of "fill". I changed colors every two frames to give her a flashing effect. |
Plan Three: Add Rotating Mandalas
I began a new drawing (still in the Do Ink Animation app) and chose a fill and border color, and dragged out a shape to fill the screen. Then I added line or/and shape pattern.
I made two of these patterned mandalas so that I could rotate them behind my rotoscope in opposing directions. The centers won't show much, so I focus the design on the edges.
I made two of these patterned mandalas so that I could rotate them behind my rotoscope in opposing directions. The centers won't show much, so I focus the design on the edges.
 Mandala with line designs, click to enlarge |  Mandala with shape designs, click to enlarge |
Three Layers Each mandala rotates once; one clockwise, one counter-clockwise
 Select mandala> clip properties> Rotate> + 1 |  "i" to choose background color |
This teaches: movement, rotation, layers, line & shape pattern, & rotoscope animation
Plan four: Dancing Sketches
Since the rotoscope animation has a built in transparency (the background is empty and see through) while it remains in the app, you could use this to create some very cool effects. One idea I've been playing with is to layer the rotoscope line drawing animation over a sheet of notebook or sketchbook paper. Since my drawing looks like it was made using a sharpie marker, I try to enhance that illusion by either leaving a marker on the notebook when I take the still image, or write with a sharpie marker alongside the animation. Below is my first rotoscope done this way, "How to Whip."
You can bring in still photos to your compositions in Do Ink then layer your Rotoscope over them
| Since your rotoscope animation retains transparency in the Do Ink Animation app, you can layer them over a still photo to create interesting illusions like dancing sketches. |  |
Did you see the video of the kids showing up at the end? That was an added step using the green screen app by Do Ink. I exported my sketbookbook video and put it in the green screen app and layered on the original green screen video, lined them up with the drawings. The only problem is that GS app limits you to three layers. I needed 4. So I "flattened" the video effect when I had two kids in place by exporting it. Then brought it back in to a new project and finished the third child's effect.
Gif: mixing physical and digital video. View the video below to hear the music.
Why use a sharpie if you can draw with your finger?
Using two layers of rotoscope animation one empty one with color-adding rotation
You can duplicate your animation and resize to make a synchronized dance party
Animated Sketchnotes from Tricia Fuglestad on Vimeo.
More Advanced ideas: animated sketchnotes
Animated sketchnotes
 Used superimpose app to erase & save PNG |  flipbook animation of fish in Do Ink |
Drawing and animation interacting-extra step to create overlapping effect
 Lowest layer of animation |  digital picture, erased and saved as png |
Use the composition mode of Do Ink to combine rotoscope, sketchbook drawing and masked sketchbook drawing. Create an animation path for extra movement
 Masked drawing saved as PNG |  flipbook animation in Do Ink drawing app |
Spooky Sketch that shows overlapping and relative size
 straight foreward drawing-no masking |  Drew 4 then copied & pasted rest |
I flipped the butterfly animation by grabbing the corner and crossing over to the other side
butterfly animation over a sketchbook drawing
 Sketchbook drawing of dreaming |  PNG w/ masked out interior of bubble |
Dreaming of Dancing
 Chasing girl alien |  Running boy alien |
 Drew over my template, copied, scooted template, drew again |  I loaded my template into the Do Ink Drawing app to help get my running poses correct |
A love story that isn't so alien to some of us
Chasing Alien part 2
Mini Digital Stories:
mini digital stories from Tricia Fuglestad on Vimeo.
You can adjust the transparency of a layer of animation in the composition mode. Did this for the yellow light so that it looked like a transparent beam signalling a carrot for Carrot Boy
Turning on the lights (so much better with sound-see video)
My collaborative Rotoscope Projects:
In 2012, my 5th grade students did a collaborative rotoscope animation project with every one of my 100 students drawing over 330 frames of video pieced back together to make the animation shown in the video below. We entered it into the McGraw-Hill STEMie national online contest and won the $5000 second place prize. This money became the seed money for our 1:1 iPad art room. As you can see from the post, the process was very complicated on my end since there wasn't an iPad app (yet) that allowed students to work over video. We filmed a video then ran it through a program (mpeg streamclip) to break it down frame by frame. Students were assigned frames, pulled it into their iPad from the dropbox, drew over it in Brushes app, turned it back into the dropbox with a number that placed it back into the sequence. I pieced it all back together on my computer using a gif maker to turn it into video. They explain below:
This past school year, I tried a different kind of collaborative rotoscope animation with my 5th graders: a rotoscope in a mutoscope (digital art made physical). This time we made 4 small videos (one per class) that would loop nicely into a hand cranked mutoscope kit by Flipbookit.com. These turned out to be very cool. The work again, fell mostly on me. I had to purchase and assemble the kit, prep the video through their online tool, print the images onto labels, and stick them on flip cards. The students each made one frame of the rotoscope, so they finished in one class period. I love the results, but the kit costs over $40, so students don't get to keep their work individually. However, they do have their still image posted on Artsonia with links to their video.
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