Produced By - Insight #27 - Nathan Stobbs: VFX Artist’s Introduction to Compositing and Rotoscoping

Episode Date: October 20, 2023

Nathan Stobbs is a London based VFX artist specialising in compositing, currently working at VFX studio REALTIME. Since he first experimented with stop-motion animation and became fascinated by visual effects in movies, Nathan has been interested in this area. He enrolled in a VFX course at a university in London, where he helped with a number of projects of film students that even won several awards. In his last year at school, he entered the field early and began developing his compositing abilities in a VFX industry. When the global pandemic struck, he joined a software development company and started working as a software tester. After the industry recovered, he moved back to the composing world and returned to what he enjoyed the most, working as a compositing artist. As we go into greater detail about Nathan's experience at university, he tells some interesting stories about what inspired him to concentrate on compositing and how he got his first VFX job. Listen to this episode to learn more about some commonly used VFX software, learn about various VFX disciplines and get some helpful advice for aspiring artists and filmmakers.    Connect with Nathan: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathanstobbs/⁠ ⁠https://nathanstobbs.com/⁠    Episode quotes: “It was like playing around with stuff and I really enjoyed it. And then realizing there's a massive career in it so I thought, yeah, let's go for it.” “It was like a nice kind of wholesome project. It wasn't one of those shows where it was really technical and hard but normally it was a good project with basic and positive tasks, just trying to do the best job that you can, cracking on and going back to your roots.” “But every now and then I'll have one of these nights where I'll start working on a project at like 8 am because I'm like a night owl and I'll work on the shot with my own programs until around 6 am just to get it rendered.” “That's the whole reason why we do it, it's fun. And if it does get to a point where you're like, this is not fun anymore, this is a grind, then don't forget to have a break. There's nothing wrong with it because it’s supposed to be fun and creative.”   Connect with the podcaster: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://tomasloucky.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomasloucky/⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/thisistommen/⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠https://twitter.com/TomasLoucky⁠     Follow the podcast: 🌐 Website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://produced-by-podcast.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 🔗 Links: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://linktr.ee/produced_by⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠   💬 Contact: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://produced-by-podcast.com/contact⁠⁠⁠ 📷 Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://instagram.com/produced_by_podcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  🎥 YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCT5LHnM6YCaeVzIr0WatOsw⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  🎵 TikTok: ⁠https://www.tiktok.com/@producedbypodcast⁠  👾 Discord: ⁠⁠https://discord.gg/8j3zNzwqJg⁠ ⁠ ✉️ Email: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[e-mail]⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠Spotify: ⁠https://lnkd.in/e5Y8Wscx⁠  Apple Podcasts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/produced-by/id1684669642⁠⁠⁠⁠ 📨 Newsletter: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/build-relation/newsletter-follow?entityUrn=7092551882589528065 ⁠   If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting it on ⁠Patreon⁠. ❤️ 🤩 If you enjoy listening to the podcast, please, leave a review on your podcast app, subscribe or share it with your friends. You can also send us a message and share any feedback, advice and tips for guests. 📭 Subscribe at ⁠⁠⁠https://produced-by-podcast.com/subscribe⁠⁠⁠ so that you don't miss out!    #producedbypodcast #producedby #enterthespotlight     Enjoy! Connect with Tomas:X: https://x.com/TomasLoucky⁠⁠⁠Stan: https://stan.store/TommenLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomasloucky/⁠⁠Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisistommen/⁠⁠Unproduced:Newsletter: https://unproduced.substack.comYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@unproducednotesSpotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/033Ddo8ibDlLYoaP7FFLIWMore:Links: https://linktr.ee/produced_by⁠⁠⁠Newsletter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://producednewsletter.substack.com/⁠The Podcast Club: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/25420030/Tools & gear that support the show:Metricool: https://f.mtr.cool/HRJBZKRiverside: https://riverside.sjv.io/vDnDodFavikon: https://www.favikon.com?fpr=tommenRa Optics: https://ra-optics.myshopify.com/discount/TOMMEN?rfsn=8803777.591d19JamX: https://jamx.ai/podcasters-offer?ref_id=e02d48af-ef66-4e76-b804-c2e8d282a8bfSome links are affiliate links, which means I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. If you find them useful, using these links helps keep the podcast running. Thank you!  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

So before we move on, can we try to explain some terms that you just mentioned for someone who doesn't know anything about the effects? What is it compositing? What does the compositor do? Compositor essentially, the last person in the factory line of making on crafting the FX shot. The other person who is getting different elements, renders, stock footage, and doing their combining at the end and really, you know, bringing the realism. to any VFX shot. And it's not just, you know, combined in. We do paint work as well. We might be doing some rotosam tango,

on the prep side. But yeah, it's definitely just that combination generating that final image. What compositing mainly relies on. So is it right at the end of the pipeline or is it one of the last ones? It's definitely right at the end. You know, Com is one of those things

where it always happens at the end because you always have to, you know, do the final touches at the end. But comp can begin a different stages in the production so you can use comp for testing things out with a slap comping. The slap comp is just when you do like a really rough pump or like a rough edit essentially just to find out about timing and scale and proportions before you spend that for time. So comp is always at the end generally speaking but it also happens at different points in production as well.

Yeah and I think you also mentioned a rotor. What does it mean? So roto, roto, is essentially the task of going frame by frame and masking out elements, people, objects, props, whatever needs to be rotoed so that you can extract it from that footage and use it in, or use it as an element for your final composite, really. So is that something you also do? I do a little bit. When I started in the industry, I did a lot of my first job back when I was still studying university. I was a

Root and Paint artist essentially for a couple of weeks at this company so I did a little bit then but I think as you get more into the compositing role you very well comes up every now and then a lot of composites

are out of the road and I've done it before in their career but you do it less than less as you go through the industry really now I kind of spend most of my time assembling shots than doing roto and prep don't really do much roto and prep

any more these days Roto sounds quite like job where you need to be very patient Yeah, it's one of those things where you know you put a podcast on or you put some TV on in the background And you just tank it out because it takes you know it doesn't it can be quick sometimes it can be you know Really time consuming this depends if you've got hair cloth clothes like really complicated shapes It's definitely going to take a while but it's just something simple and non like deforming shapes can be really quick, but you know, it depends. And you can't choose somehow selected by default,

or you need to make sure to do it manually so that it's more precise? It's one of those things. You've got to be very precise. What I would recommend anyone who's going to rotoscoping or does rotoscoping is, you know, you have to watch the whole footage for and back over and over and over again

until you start recognizing different shapes that you can use inside of the object props or person that you want to remove instead of just kind of going for it and putting a shape down. The last thing you want is to do a rotation is you're making

these things called splines. So you know when you get to make a point you make three or four points and you have a shape. So you don't want to do the thing where you're making a shape to throw someone and you've just put a bunch of splines and points across the whole person

as that outline. You'll quickly realize that it's incredibly hard to control and just painful it's just completely painful but if you make these small simple objects within a complicated object it's so that are easy to control and simpler to roto as well you won't be trying to go every frame and fix it and you need to go into the frames where you know moves really but it's a very manual process but i'm hoping with AI becoming more more prevalent in these day and age that AI can take away roll-escape and just get rid of it because know what to do it more. People are not really excited about doing this job.

No, Roto scoping is one of those jobs that is. There's never, I mean, there's people out there that do enjoy it, but I'm not one of those people. I get really bored quickly. You know, I can row for a week and then I start losing my sanity, really. But everyone else is different. Some people can rooto for months and some people do just roto for years and that's, you know, all they do is roto. But yeah, not me. I think not built for that. Yeah, honestly, I cannot blame me. I think I wouldn't be able to do that either. Yeah, exactly. Can you say on average how long you can manage, like, let's say in a day,

I don't know, a few minutes of footage or seconds? I know it depends on how difficult the scene is, but can you maybe give some examples? Yeah, so there's been programs that I worked on back when I was a junior composer where it was, you know, four people, and there's a simple shot, they were just walking down this field. Essentially, what we had to do was comping like a little airport, but like a little rundown, not like a popper. But it's the airport more of like a garage airport, that makes sense, like a little kind of ran down one. And we had these four characters just walking down. And I think it was only 100 to 160 frames long.

And that essentially took me a week because, you know, you got bag straps that are wearing, so you've got these things ringing about you know you've got to get them walking so you got those do the shapes for the legs and stuff motion blow the lacquer but you know one of those things is it is complicated not complicated it's simple

but it is time consuming but really when I wrote it as well I try to see there's areas that I can use to save time so sometimes what I use is a Kia what Kia is it's a way to extract a mask from luminance values

of your plate So for example, if you have your hand over the sky, and the sky is white, and your hand is pretty silhouated in the dark, you can use Sequea to get that hand instead of having to roto the hand. So it was one of those things where you've got to be like clever with it and kind of find areas that you can do to like save time. But this is more for TV. I think if you're working on feature films, there'll be a lot more precise and more time for that. But for me it took me like a week to roto this. what was like 160 frames. Sorry, how many seconds is it then?

160 frames, that would be 8 to 12 seconds shot. So nothing crazy, but it still takes a while. Yeah, it's good to get an idea how time-consuming kid is and how patient you need to be. Yeah, but that's why I'm hoping for AI just take that job away.

People have been making good progress on that. So I'm really excited to see that kind of improve and then take over as like the industry standard hopefully one day