WEBVTT

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In this short video,

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we're going to show you how we use

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two different animation techniques,

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both rotoscoping

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and traditional hand-drawn animation

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in the TED-Ed Lesson,

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"Miss Gayle's 5 Steps to Slam Poetry:

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A Lesson of Transformation."

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A poetry slam is a competition

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in which poets are judged on their poems,

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often for qualities of emotional power

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and lyrical resonance.

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Our Lesson was created by Gayle Danley,

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a veteran slam poet

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who spent decades teaching children

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to express themselves
through spoken words,

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a Lesson, which offers
a guide to creating poetry

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with immediacy and power,

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also serves as a great
example of exactly that.

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It's a story told in the form of a poem

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that packs a real emotional punch.

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She introduces Tyler,

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who's sitting in an 11th
grade writing class,

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struggling with the assignment
of having to write a poem

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based on a personal experience.

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The story is told from two perspectives,

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one external

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and one internal.

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Miss Gayle's narration sets the stage

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of the outside world,

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and spoken word artist Pages D. Matan

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performs Tyler's inner voice.

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To set these two realms

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of inner- and outer-experience apart,

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a different animation technique was used

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to illustrate each.

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The real world was animated
by rotoscoping,

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with a frame-by-frame tracing
of live-action footage

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in black and white line art.

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The animation depicting the inner-stream

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of consciousness world of Tyler's memories

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was traditionally drawn on paper,

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featured watercolored backgrounds

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and a more expressionistic design.

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Once deciding on this general approach,

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the project went right
into pre-production.

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In animation, pre-production
is the planning stage.

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It's all the decisions
that need to be made

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before going and actually making the thing

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in its final form.

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This can include developing

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the look or design of the piece,

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experimenting with colors
and camera angles,

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revising the script,

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and so on.

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All these decisions are important

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because they determine
how much work and time

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the production will take.

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Extra time spent here figuring things out

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can often save a lot
of time down the road.

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For our project, a storyboard
was first created,

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in which the framing,
composition, and imagery

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for each shot was determined.

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Then an animatic was made,

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which is basically a movie
of the storyboard.

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This helped us figure
out the timing of each shot.

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It also helped us get an idea

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of how well everything
would flow together visually

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between our rotoscoped

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and traditionally animated scenes

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once they were assembled.

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For the rotoscoped shots,
we first had to create

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the live action footage to be traced.

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Working with what we had
in our humble office,

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we created a classroom of desks

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using only one small table.

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We shot this multiple times

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from each angle the storyboard called for,

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each time with a different volunteer

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from among our co-workers.

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Our source footage elements

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then needed to be composited,

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or assembled and arranged together,

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before we could rotoscope them.

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A composite is a special effects term

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for a shot that combines
two or more elements in it

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that were created separately.

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To do this, we used After Effects,

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a digital compositing
and motion graphics program.

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The first step was to isolate

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the part of the frame we needed

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by masking off the unnecessary
negative space,

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or parts of the frame we didn't need.

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The individual shots
were then each layered

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into one composite shot,

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resized and arranged appropriately

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to create the illusion of them

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all being there in perspective
at the same time.

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Every third frame was then exported

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as an image sequence,

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ready to be rotoscoped.

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The tracing was done digitally,

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drawn directly on a Cintiq monitor.

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The rest of the animation

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was done by hand on paper.

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Unlike rotoscoping,

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here the timing and motion
of the animation

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was all planned out by the animator
ahead of time.

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An appropriate number
of drawings were then done

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to accomplish the movement.

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Each animation drawing is then scanned,

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registered,

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and sequenced together in the computer.

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That animation sequence is then composited

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with the layered background art.

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Camera moves are then
plotted out and executed.

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One way that poetry uses language

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to communicate emotions and ideas

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is through the use of metaphor.

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"Mama's lies are footsteps
too many to count

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making excuses on black snow."

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Animation's a medium that's also
uniquely well-suited

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to communicating emotions and ideas

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through visual metaphor.

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Applying the dual techniques

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of rotoscoped and traditional animation,

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each with their own inherent looks,

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allowed us to visually represent

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the dual nature of the creative process

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described in the Lesson.

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There's the internal aspect
of experience and memory,

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which is mined for inspiration,

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and there's the external aspect

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of revealing it to the world

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through a structured presentation.

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We combined both techniques
for the last shots

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of Tyler delivering his poem to the world,

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allowing us to convey
in a direct, visual way

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the power of that moment of communication

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when internal becomes external,

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which, in both poetry and animation,

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is where the magic happens.