Day 125 / My Secret Weapon

Well, last night I had major technical difficulties but by the end of the night I had something pretty sweet.  Basically, I had this idea while doing my previous creative thing about using a mini-projector to project images onto my whiteboard so that I could advance frame by frame and rotoscope it.  
 
It could even be used more loosely in the sense that perhaps all I’m taking from a shot is the camera movement.  I could take a shot from a film that smoothly trucks in on something and I could use objects within that scene as markers for objects in my scene.  That way my final shot may look nothing like the shot I used for reference except that the camera moves feel the same.

 

So, on the way home from work I stopped by a Toys R Us and picked up this toy mini-projector by Eye-Clops.  It’s a cheap little projector and I wouldn’t recommend it for any real movie watching but for this particular purpose that I’m using it for, its perfect.  I also bought a mini-dvi to RCA connector to go from my computer to the mini-projector.  
 
I was hoping to rotoscope the crane kick from The Karate Kid and I figured I’d be able to find some reference of it on YouTube.  When I got home the problems began.  I figured out how to mount the projector to the animation stand and went to connect my computer up to it and realized my cable was incorrect.  I have a “MICRO” DVI port not a “Mini”-DVI!  No problem let me get Jenny’s laptop. She’s got Mini-DVI. Except I find out her laptop doesn’t support the Mini-DVI to “Composite” adaptor which is what I need to use. Lame!  No crane kick.  
 
I grabbed June’s little portable DVD player.  It was working but I couldn’t advance in frame by frame increments Dang!  After hours and hours of futzing I finally got my Playstation to work for me.  Unfortunately, it was midnight by the time I was prepared to begin animating.

 

So, I changed my plans and decided to officially start my dry-erase music video altogether.  I stayed up almost all night doing it.  I feel pretty good about what I’ve created so far and as I write this post the animation room is prepared for me to continue my work.  Expect my next creative thing to be more progress on this.

 

The scene I roto’d for the opening shot is from “The Hudsucker Proxy”.   I hope you enjoy!