Rotoscoping

Open After Effects and create a new compostion by Composition > New Composition.

This dialog box should appear and make sure the settings match making sure the presets chosen is HDTV 1080 25.

Import your footage by going to Import > File and then choose your footage.

Drag the footage from the libary onto the timeline. It will appear in your compostion panel. Resize (if needed) to cover the composition background. To resize, grab the corner of the footage and then hold the shift key so it resizes proportionally.

To adjust the length of the clip, drag the end of the clip and it resizes the length. Resize the clip so it is between 10 - 15 seconds.

On the top toolbar, select the RotoBrush Tool.

To apply the RotoBrush, double click the footage in the composition panel to isolate that layer.

Using the RotoBrush, paint inside the object to outline the character.

As seen in the example, an error has appeared explaining that the compostion settings do not match the footage settings.

These need to be changed so they match.

To do this Composition > Composition Settings.

If more of the footage is selected than desired, hold down Alt whilst using the RotoBrush and it turns red.

This allows you to paint the areas you wish to deselect.

Once you have painted the objects you want to rotoscope, click the spacebar and this will track the selection.

If you notice the selection adds or subtracts too much of the object or background. Press the spacebar again to stop on that frame. This will then allow you to paint out or paint in the correct object in the footage.

Once you have rotoscoped the whole piece of footage. Go back to view your compostion.

To do this, look at the top bar in the Compostion panel and you should see the Comp 1 tab. Click on this and it takes you back to the whole composition view.

You should see something similar in the example image.

We want to switch this around so that we only see the background rather than the object.

In the Effect Control panel, which should have replaced the libary, on the left, there is a check box called Invert Foreground/Background. Tick this on.

Now we want to add colour to our rotoscoped footage. To do this, in your Effects and Presets panel, search for Solid Composite.

Select this preset and drag on top of your footage in the composition panel.

Solid Composite Options will now appear in the Effect Control panel.

Double click on the colour box to bring up the colour options dialog box and choose a different colour you would lke your object to be.

You can play around with more of the Solid Composite options but once you are happy with the colour etc. you should end up with something looking similar to above.

This can now be rendered.