Lynne from the Quarmby Lab at Simon Fraser University asked me to create this animation as a promotional video for her lab. She wanted something different from the usual short student and teacher interviews found in academic promotional videos. Inspired by Gorillaz music videos, I proposed animated students in a live-action lab. I whipped up a quick proof of concept. Lynne was sold.
"Too Much Milk"
My tracking test, to make sure I could composite an animated character into a live action video with reasonable results.
The first step was laying out the footage I needed. Not being able to fly out to Vancouver myself, Lynne took some walk-through videos of the lab for me. From that footage I plotted out the lab and the shots needed. Lynne then got Hans Goksoyr, a filmographer at SFU, to shoot the footage. Lynne recorded an early version of the voice-over and I edited the lab footage together with some aerial footage to create the working composition.
The next step was to animate the students, which I drew from reference shots Lynne took of the students doing various things in the lab. I then motion tracked them into the footage and animated various masks and effects to make them fit better.
Finally, I colour corrected each scene and inserted the final narration.
