This is my earliest video, uploaded to Youtube in December 2007, ten years ago. It depicts me playing a rather sloppy guitar solo, with my friends Veronica, Kelly and Candace shooting me with a coordinated light show... Afterwards I printed out the frames and traced and painted them in on Printer's paper.
Then I rescanned the painted frames and arranged them to time with the sound recording and voila! Rotoscope Guitar Solo painted by hand.
You may notice that the solo is... not the exactly the "cleanest" or most "elaborate" or "technically proficient" or "good" guitar solo that you've ever heard. Well one of the reasons for this was the coordination aspect - I was directing everyone, and wanted to time both the camera, the light, and my own movements in a certain way, so that my concentration was diverted away from delivering what would have surely otherwise been a Van Halen level of playing achievement.
Here you can see Kelly (in the red tshirt) moving into the frame holding a stage light, so that he would be shining the light against my criminally under utilized playing hand. Candace was the camera operator and had to zoom in at precisely that angle at the same time. Both of them did an amazing job at this. The RS symbol on the guitar I believe is Veronica's informal initials from an old stage name; I borrowed her guitar for the shoot. Because I'm an expert guitar player.
In these next two frames you see Kelly continuing his pass around me with the light held at a higher angle, followed by Veronica hold up the power cords to keep them from getting tangled. Candace shot this using a very low res camera phone, and the sound was recorded on the phone as well. Oh and I didn't have hair like that - it was a wig and hat also borrowed from Veronica. A real bare bones budget production to be sure.
I'm pretty sure this took three takes to get it right. Everyone involved behaved like consummate professionals and the shoot went off quite well; to this day I'm grateful to them all for their help with this project. It was shot in the summer of 2016 at Dave and Veronica Johnny's old house on Danforth Ave in Toronto. They're both old friends of mine, and a married couple who are the core duo of their own band the Johnnys. Dave was an observer of the shoot, in that he observed from a stool with a beer in hand. Kelly and Candace later moved back to their hometown of Fort Smith, Alberta, where they got married and are managing to keep themselves not frozen up there.
And me, I just keep on moseyin' along, singin' my song and playin' this here guitar that I got me from somewheres...
One of the ideas was to sell prints of the original painted frames. That was shelved, but who knows... If there's enough interest I might make them available in that way.
Writing and animation by Greg McCann, the author of this post and owner of this Steemit Channel. Photo images by Candice Mercredi. To view more of my work, please visit www.fireawaymarmot.com.