Rotoscoping Tutorial by @antoniosvivaldi
Hi everyone! I’m excited to announce my long-delayed Rotoscoping Tutorial - requested by a number of people over the past calendar year.
In this tutorial, I will show you how to create the cutout gifs like this (and seen in most of my gifsets under this tag) with Rotoscoping on After Effects. I’ll also provide additional examples and a number of things that I do to optimise my giffing / Rotoscoping workflow (e.g. useful shortcuts & other things to be aware of).
This is the structure of the tutorial:
- Why Rotoscoping? Photoshop video timeline’s limitations
- Photoshop workflow pt 1: Preparing your gif
- After Effects workflow: Interface, shortcuts, and Rotoscoping tools
- Photoshop workflow pt 2: Assembling your gif; with multiple examples
- Bonus content: Rotoscoping tips* & workarounds to common issues
For quick reference, here are example gifsets (and where Rotoscoping is used in the posts) that I will mention in the tutorial:
- Example 1: Cutout gif effect | panels 2 + 4
- Example 2: Changing a gif’s background colour | all panels
- Example 3: Cutout gif effect in a shape | all panels
- Example 4: Putting it all together | panels 1, 3, & 5
What you need & need to know:
- Software: Photoshop & After Effects (After Effects 2021 or later for Rotobrush 2.0)*
- Hardware: 16GB RAM required to run later versions of AE*
- Difficulty: Advanced; Knowledge in making gifs, applying layer masks, and using video timeline interface assumed
- Key concepts: Rotoscoping (AE) / Video Timeline (AE+ PS) / Layer Masks & Groups (PS)
- Supplementary files: tutorial resources
*I’m currently running the latest version of PS & AE on an M2 Mac, but I’ve also used older versions (CC 2015 & 2020) on Intel-based Macs. I’ll outline some known compatibility & performance issues, and workarounds later in this tutorial that could help streamline your giffing workflow.
Tutorial under the cut. Like / Reblog this post if you find this tutorial helpful. Linking this post / the example gifsets in your post caption, will be greatly appreciated if you read this to create effects seen in Examples 3 + 4.
