Halloween Rotoscoping

The kids and I had a hoot this weekend making some fun Halloween clips using a film editing technique called rotoscoping.  I wanted the kids to work with an easy set of techniques to add special effects, particularly sci-fi effects.  Gabriel is a huge Star Wars fan so lasers and lightsabers ranked high on their requested list of effects.

After spending an hour with Adobe After Effects CS5 it was clear the the methods and UX would be far beyond what they could manage on their own.  A little more digging brought up SaberFX – a rotoscoping utility for OSX designed solely for the purpose of Star Wars effect rotoscoping … perfect!

The program is wonderfully simple – force lightening and lightsaber effects.  Gabriel discovered that drawing lightsabers in segments resulted in laser blasts – a discovery that yielded the Star Wars battle trifecta: force lightening, lightsabers, and blasters!

Once a video segment is complete SaberFX, can render it to a .mov file for import to iMovie for the addition of sound effects, titles, and music.  We will definitely be working on some longer features in the weeks to come and are working on building some plans and storyboards for our very own fan film.

The unregistered version is free to use, but will stamp an ‘unregistered version’ text on the top of the video.  After watching the kids’ excitement and growing enthusiasm  playing with SaberFX I decided to pony up for the $60 registered version (correction!) $29 registered version.  Money well spent for what will be weekends of filmmaking delights.

 

One thought on “Halloween Rotoscoping

  1. Jim says:

    Grant,

    This is so brilliant, Miles is just getting deep in and recently got a light saber, so we are playing with this for sur. You rule, I still think you are the best dad ever. The stuff you do with your kids is not only so cool, but also inspiring. Thanks dude.

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