Motion Graphic Techniques

Here is some research I have conducted into motion graphic techniques that I might like to use for my Motion Graphics Project.

Animation-
I looked into an animated movie called Tekkonkinkreet and I found out a lot about the way they made the animation in the opening sequence.
It was made using the SOFTIMAGE|3D Toon Shader and is an excellent animation work, even when viewed now after 3D CG has become commonplace. The opening scene was made with 500 hand-drawings. The film has an aspect ratio of 2.35:1 and the whole movie was drawn and animated using SOFTIMAGE|3D Toon Shader. The scenery is made using an output image which is drawn by the Art Director and then is affixed onto a 3D layout. This is called camera mapping. The first scene of crows is created with XSI Particle. The movie also uses 2D motion blur. To reduce the CPU costs of motion blur, a render tree was created to change the colours of locations with a large amount of motion changes. Based on this information, motion blur was added using 2D software. The scene of a gangster character is also created with XSI using toon shaders.

Typography-
I will be using typography for the title in the title sequence so I looked at the opening sequence of Zombieland which features the credits as 3D texts being affected by the environment in the film. The text featuring the credits and 'rules' of Zombieland are made using Maya and lit to fit each scene. The credit texts are cleverly placed in the scenes to make them look like part of the environment, for example, placed on glass so it can be animated to be smashed along with the glass to make it look realistic. Zombieland has an aspect ratio of 2.35:1 and the 3D rules text is featured throughout the film. 

Rotoscoping-
I saw a rotoscoping technique in the opening sequence of Juno that I really liked so I decided to look into how they made it to see if I could learn something about creative rotoscoping and if I could incorporate that into my project. In the intro, a romantic folk song plays whilst Juno is walking to a convenience store holding a carton of juice. The design of this intro is very interesting and took a long time to make. All of the frames were hand-drawn over real images and cut-out and scanned onto a computer and printed off on a Xerox printer to give it a unique look and then scanned in again to put on Adobe AfterEffects to turn it into a stop motion animation. The text was created in the same way. This illustrated look is completely unique for this movie and proves its authentic independent nature. It looks like it was doodled in a school book and is very creative. The screen ratio of Juno is 1.85:1.