Alex Becker Editing Contest
Editing quick meme clips was not something I’ve done before so the task piqued my interest. Of course, the first requirement was tracking the head of the player in the game and replacing it with Becker’s, then comes the more interesting part: adding in new elements which fit the aesthetic and contribute to the clip.
Here are the final 4 Gifs
How It’s Made
Here is the original footage of a behind the back dunk.
The starting point is good, there’s a cool visual style and the facial expressions are very distinct - it can easily be built upon but first I need a selection of stills for the face swap. I gathered all of these from youtube thumbnails and videos and quickly masked them in photoshop, no need to be too precise
Null Object Tracking
Position and Rotation keyframes are applied to nulls for faces to parent to.
Once motion tracked the face can be added onto the scene and swapped to different expressions when necessary. Now there are some foreground elements such as the arms/basketball and other players which need to be rotoscoped/masked frame by frame to improve final composite.
As the footage is relatively low res (it’s an old Xbox 360 game) the rotoscope does not have to be perfect, especially with how fast the character motion is.
With the core animation in place there are a few additions to be made to enhance the clips and bring everything together, starting with the nameplate.
Particles are used as a transitional effect and to add some more interest to the still image scene. Finally a X/Y slide with directional blur is used to transition between scenes - this combined with the particles effects adds a bit more excitement and life.
Explosion Effects: Backboard Breaking
I wanted to add a glass shattering effect at the time of the dunk, this was achieved with real footage of a lightbulb breaking and two glass particle systems.
Putting it all Together
The final animation.
