Friday, February 12, 2016

Roger Rabbit Scenes




As I mentioned before in a previous post, the scene above was the first one I animated on Who Framed Roger Rabbit ? I had never worked on animation/live action scenes before. It was pretty scary to get started.
The ostrich was less of a problem, since we don't see her feet contacting the ground. Frames later the full figure frog does show that contact, but luckily the pattern of the floor tiles gave me something to register him to.
The following, very long scene turned out to be the most difficult one (technically). A lot of characters involved, starting with the brooms from Fantasia holding on to real brooms, which had been manipulated by puppeteers. All on ones, and to the beat of the music. Then this crazy pelican postman shows up on a live action bicycle, loosing control. He zips of screen with a fish in his beak, before the camera catches up with him on the ground after he crashed, flying mail all around him. That part was animated by Dave Spafford.
Bob Hoskins then bounces into a Fantasia Hippo. He proceeds with his walk on the Maroon Studio's backlot. There is a cattle call, starting with a sort of Preston blair kind of a cow, then Clarabelle Cow and so on.
A big pig head enters the scene, walking in the opposite direction. He was fun to do, just this happy, big guy, minding his own business. There are more characters Hoskins encounters like the goons from Sleeping Beauty, but I didn't do those. At the end of the scene we catch up with the Hippo, who is getting ready to have lunch, but as she sits down the bench crashes, sending a man flying.











All this was pretty labour intense stuff, so we were all shocked to find out that the live action photostats for the scene had been printed with the wrong fielding. The actual live action footage showed the camera a little further back with more image around the frame. For the love of God, we thought...now what?? My animation just did not fit into the live action. There was talk that I might have to redraw the whole scene over, in proportion to properly sized photostats.
Luckily another solution was found. ILM, who did all of our final compositing, zoomed into the live action footage a little to compensate for the mistake.
So when you watch the scene again, keep in mind that there was more scenery in the shot, but we don't see it. The drama of filmmaking!!!

8 comments:

  1. That must have been scary for a while to think that all that time and effort may have been wasted! Glad to hear that story had a happy ending, ha ha! :)

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  2. You mentioned in an earlier post that this was the first sequence you did on the film. I wonder if it was to get you acquainted with the process before doing Roger himself. Or did you do other cameos along the way?

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    1. These two scenes just happened to be ready for handout when I started on the film. I did other cameos as well, will post about those scenes soon.

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    2. great stuff. Thanks for taking the time to reply to my past few comments. It's evidence of your abilities that you did these scenes well without being eased into the whole live action/animation process!

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  3. All the efforts put into this movie are what make it such a masterpiece. I'm always amazed by the details and the beautifully drawn characters. It will always be my favorite movie.

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  4. Thanks for sharing this valuable information with us. It’s really very informative and nice post.
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  5. Firstly I would like to say a big thank you for your superb inspiring Blog Andreas! I was watching Who Framed Roger Rabbit with Brian Sibley and Richard Holliss in July 1988 when I saw as the credits rolled the name of Boguslaw Wilk with who I went to Wolverhampton Polytechnic I'd love to get in touch with him if anyone knows what he's doing now? My email address is muirhewitt@hotmail.com

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  6. I was hoping for some feedback regarding Boguslaw Wilk Disney animator on Who Framed Roger Rabbit!

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