Mr X (Moving Image Picture)

This film featuring, Duncan X, a tattooist from South London, talking about his life experiences and work.

http://www.moving-picture.com/work/mr-x

This is the text explaining shortly the VFX processes that went into making this video.

''The task was to determine how the tattoos would first be removed, then proceed to grow back over Duncan’s skin. MPC's Motion Design studio attended the shoot, where Duncan had his body covered in make up and tracking markers to determine their placement.

VFX Supervisor John Sunter led the Motion Design studio in creating a storyboard of how each scene would look, including the design of the tattoos. These then acted as style frames for the director to work from. "Alex entrusted us to design a 'look' for the animations based on Duncan's own tattoo designs,” said John. "It was an exciting opportunity for us to demonstrate our in-studio tracking and compositing skills. Alex and I had a very similar vision for the look of many of the shots – so when Duncan spoke about heroin the tattoos took on a smoky quality to reflect this.”

Extensive cleanup was necessary to remove the tracker markers, along with the traces of tattoos under his make-up. This meant taking sections of skin and pasting them onto other parts of his body using Nuke and After Effects.

The tattoos were animated and then tracked onto his body using Mocha. RealFlow was also utilized to create the flowing effects, and the snakes were animated in Cinema 4D. ''


I posted this video because I wanted to experiment with fluids, generally focusing on mist and other types of fluids if it fit in the context, but this video is what I visioned in my head. I thought it was very creative how the VFX artists emphasised what Duncan's was saying about heroin by adding the smoky effect to the tattoos. The video is in black and white which I think makes the smoky effect more effective.
I have carried out my own experiment which I shall be posting, using water and food colouring to study the flow and movement which I shall then try and re-create in Maya following a tutorial.