Wire removal & rotoscoping

In this post I'm going to write a brief explanation about this job I had in the year 2009. I assisted my friend and former-teacher Alfredo Velasquez with a couple of scenes that required some "clean up". The scenes are from an Ecuadorian feature film. Unfortunately we never knew the official title.

So here is the first scene. I used After Effects and Photoshop for all the process. In After Effects I used the "simple wire removal" tool, and clone stamp wherever it was needed. Photoshop came in when I needed to build a new hat for the character. As you will see, the character is coming down from the sky but spinning thanks to the rope. Yes, that rope was just any kind of rope and the knot behind the head is HUUUGE!! Now for the last part of the scene I had to do a lot, I mean a lot of frame-by-frame painting because the rope was waving in front of the balloons.

Now the second scene was much more easy but still needed some time to get done. Prior the shooting of this scene, the mirror was fine, no dust, it was clean. Later when they shot this scene they realized somebody had out it face down. Here is where I came in. My task was to replace the mirror. It had to be flawless. I started with Photoshop, got a still frame from the clean mirror and cleaned it up with some brushes (digital brushes of course). Once the back of this mirror was ready, I jumped into After Effects. This was going to be much easier to work with because I just had to match the movement of 1 layer. Well, the match didn't work out as I expected so I took the long way. I set the layer in 3D perspective and moved it, rotated it every 5 frames, sometimes 2 or even even 1 frame. You have to be very careful when you do something like this. Just like animating a character or anything else, you need a layout or a preliminary animation path. Once you get the whole sequence, then you work with the in-between. Well, after I matched the movement I did some levels correction and some brightness/contrast tweaking. You can see that sometimes the wood piece is facing upwards so it becomes a bight brighter.

Feel free to ask any questions!! Thank you.

Scenes from Corporate Video - AVIS rent a car

Back to 2009, working with "Primal Producciones" again. This video I believe was something like 5 minutes long. The funny thing was that it was being worked on in Quito, Ecuador but was meant to be sent to Colombia! This time we were 4 animators working with After Effects. All material was provided by a creative agency, they even gave us a photo-storyboard made with the pictures that we used in the final product.

Scenes contained here are just a small selection of what I did with After Effects in a 3D camera setup. The Avis logo is property of their respective owner(s). Please be aware, this video is not intended for any commercial purposes, just meant to show what I have done in terms of animation.

Digital Painted Backgrounds

In this post I will present 3 digital backgrounds. They were not commercial, I just painted them for fun.

The first picture is what I called "Lava Volcanoes" and you can see why is that. I remember that I got my digital tablet in June 2006, once it was in my hands I started painting whatever I could. So it came to my mind the idea of mountains, orange color, purple, a sad sky, I didn't want to paint a happy place or just  a nice environment. Most people thought my inspiration was the Ecuadorian Andes mountains but the truth is, it was one of my favorite movie-art-books: The Art Of Star Wars: Episode III.

Now this image is basically a photo with a few spaceships painted over it. I remember I took this picture from my room. I lived in the valley of Cumbaya, just 15 minutes from the Ecuadorian capital city: Quito. Behind those mountains is the city, so you can tell in Ecuador we are mostly surrounded by mountains (in the highlands I mean).

The last one is a fully illustrated sky. Last year (2010) I got a call from a friend and she told me some guys were looking for a team of artists to develop an iPhone game. Our proposition seemed to be the best but unfortunately the game never came to be. It all stuck in after we presented our character designs, a background and an animation test. The story was something about samurais but the gameplay was supposed to allow you to go back and forward through the different levels. Enough said, take a look!!

The Recyclables - Episode 3 scenes

Final episode of "The Recyclables". Simone and Bottle are looking for Cardboard in the sanitary landfill. Flex and Battery think they have everything under control, but they don't. Lucas, a new friend of Simone's gets there just in time to save the good guys.

The Recyclables - Episode 2 scenes

Scenes from episode 2 of "The Recyclables". The characters are now in planet Earth, the Recyclables have become friends with a girl called Simone. Meanwhile the Toxics are on their way to kidnap Cardboard.

The Recyclables - Episode 1 scenes

Going back to the 2008-thesis-project known as "The Recyclables". I posted a detailed description of this project weeks ago, so feel free to go back through my older posts. Below, you are going to see a few completed scenes including audio tracks and subtitles!!

Outlet Viajes - Illustration & Design

By the end of 2009, Outlet Viajes was almost ready to start operations in Ecuador. The logo was already designed but the catalog not. So it was my job to take all text and pictures they gave me and develop an A4-paper-size horizontal catalog, which was a bit unusual. Anyway before I started I must say I landed this job because my "seal illustrations" where chosen among others. They were looking for a local animal that could represent their tourism agency, there were 3 options: a frigatebird, a hummingbird, and a seal (not a sea lion).

The seal was chosen but I had to redesign it. Here is the final version and also a few pics from the catalog which had both english and spanish printed versions.

SOAT TV Commercial - 2D

SOAT is a mandatory car insurance that every car owner must have in Ecuador, no matter the insurance company you choose.

So back in 2009 all insurance companies were trying to get as much clients as they could. How? TV advertising. They offered a lot of things but each company had their own approach in terms of creativity. "Alianza Seguros" wanted a full-2D commercial which was "warm, friendly, and attractive". We were a group of 4 guys, 1 illustrator, 2 animators, and the post-production supervisor. This commercial was developed by producing company "Primal Producciones" based in Quito, Ecuador.

I was responsible for all the compositing, which was done with After Effects. The roulette scene was enterily mine. After that I illustrated and animated the bus, and just animated the cat, car & skid marks.

What you are going to see is the final composite with no audio tracks and no text (they were added by the supervisor). Enjoy!!