mixing photographs and drawings

I’ve always been interested in combining animation with live action or photography. The problem that I always face is how  to prevent the contrast from being jarring, as with Sit Down, Shut Up (below) where the background photography is very distinctive from the animation.

I once asked Richard Williams, the director of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, how he recommended combining live action with animation. He responded that it was important to make sure that the different elements overlap and interact. For example, have a cartoon grab hold of the neck of a live action man and have the part of the rabbit disappear, as though it is behind the live action man (below).

Following Richard William’s advice, I developed two main ways of making sure that the photography and drawn elements interact with ease.  One way I do this is by making sure that there are drawn elements in the background, not only photographs.  For example, much of the furniture is drawn although the majority of the background is a photograph of a brick wall and a wood floor. I also make sure that the animated characters interact with photographs as Omar does with his laptop (below).

The other way I ease the background photographs with the animated characters is by layering a semi-opaque drawing over the photographs. This is particularly clear in the brick wall of the bedroom but also on wood floor. By doing this, I bring the drawn element into the background that softens the distinction between the photographs and the drawings of the animation.

Technical Note
While I animate the characters in Flash, I put together my backgrounds in Photoshop.  By doing this, I prevent my Flash files from becoming too large which leads to crashing. But even more important is Photoshop’s extensive abilities to manipulate images such as by changing the color or scewing the perspective. It also has a much greater variety of paintbrushes to use—my favorite being the airbrush tool which allows me to add the blurry layer of white that you see in the brick wall.